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Studies of Air Spring Mathematical Model and its 2015-01-0608

Performance in Cab Suspension System of Published 04/14/2015

Commercial Vehicle
Gang Tang
Hefei University of Technology

Hengjia Zhu and Yunqing Zhang

Huazhong University of Science and Tech.

Ying Sun
C&C Trucks Co., Ltd

CITATION: Tang, G., Zhu, H., Zhang, Y., and Sun, Y., "Studies of Air Spring Mathematical Model and its Performance in Cab
Suspension System of Commercial Vehicle," SAE Technical Paper 2015-01-0608, 2015, doi:10.4271/2015-01-0608.
Copyright © 2015 SAE International

Abstract roll and pitch motions. Xu et al. [5] enhanced the cab vibration
isolation performance by achieving the desired nature frequency
The vehicle ride comfort behavior is closely associated with the
range and minimizing the motion coupling at each mode of the cab.
vibration isolation system such as the primary suspension system, the
engine mounting system, the cab suspension system and the seat
Air spring has been widely applied to commercial vehicles for its low
suspension system. Air spring is widely used in the cab suspension
vibration transmissibility, variable spring rate and inexpensive
system for its low vibration transmissibility, variable spring rate and
automatic leveling. Sreedhar et al. [6] built a simplified air
inexpensive automatic leveling.
suspension model and the leveling valve model with a customized
function in ADAMS software, and built a full commercial passenger
The mathematical model of the air spring is presented. The amplitude
vehicle to evaluate the ride performance and to acquire the force
and frequency dependency of the air spring's stiffness characteristic is
excitation for the further durability analysis. Jin et al. [7] applied the
highlighted. The air spring dynamic model is validated by comparing
air spring with auxiliary volume to the heavy truck's driver seat
the results of the experiment and the simulation. The co-simulation
suspension system. They simplified the air spring only considering its
method of ADAMS and AMESim is applied to integrate the air spring
nonlinear static stiffness, but in fact the air spring's stiffness also
mathematical model into the cab multi-body dynamic model. The
depends on the amplitude and frequency of the excitation.
simulation and ride comfort test results under random excitation are
compared. It shows that the co-simulation model of the cab air spring
Several air spring models have been proposed to improve the
suspensions which considers the effects of the air spring dynamic
modeling accuracy. Quaglia and Sorli [8] derived a thermodynamic
stiffness characteristic has a good agreement with that in the test.
model of air spring with auxiliary reservoir, and Docquier et al. [9]
developed the air spring model considering the air in the pipe as a
Introduction constant moving mass. Furthermore, Lee [10] analyzed the hysteresis
affected by the heat transfer and the variation of the effective area.
In an increasingly competitive automotive market, it is important for
Considering the pipe used in the cab suspension pneumatic system is
automotive company to improve the vehicle's ride comfort and
far shorter and thinner than that of the railway vehicles, so the
reduce the cost. Many researchers [1,2,3] have reduced the vibration
Quaglia and Sorli model without regard to the heat transfer and the
transmitted from the irregular road by the method of full vehicle
air mass in the pipes is preferred.
matching, semi-active suspension full-state feedback strategies
optimization or six-point powertrain mounting optimal design. By the
The ride comfort test can be carried out on a Road Test Simulator
method of setting up a laboratory test, Ahmadian et al. [4] indicated
(RTS) in a laboratory environment. The drive file is transferred from
that the panhard rod cab suspension system had a good performance
the computer to the servo-hydraulic controller as the input signals. As
when the cab subjected to heavy inputs, while the B-post vertical and
a result, the actuators of the RTS are controlled to reproduce the
for-aft accelerations increased due to the coupling between the cab's
axles' accelerations and the displacements between the axle and the
frame. Moreover, the effect of the powertrain can also be considered
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by a special instrument. Xu et al. [11] described the road test
simulation process for vehicles on four or six degree-of-freedom RTS
for durability testing. It makes sure that the excitation input is
repeatable in the RTS method, based on which the performance of
different designs can be compared easily. It can largely reduce the test
time and cost. As lacking of the instruments such as the servo-
hydraulic controller system and the displacement sensors, the ride
comfort test is conducted on the road and the acceleration of the
measurements is acquired.
In this paper, the vehicle's ride comfort test on the road is described. The
mathematical modeling of the air spring is introduced. The air spring is
integrated into the cab suspension system by co-simulation of the
ADAMS and AMESim. Under the random excitation, the seat track's
vertical acceleration acquired by the co-simulation method considering
the dynamic stiffness characteristic of the air spring, as well as the
method which treats the air spring as a force-deflection spline, are
compared with that of the ride comfort test. The purpose of this paper is
to validate the air spring model and the integrated method is more
accurate than that of which treats the air spring as a force-deflection
spline without considering its dynamic stiffness characteristic.
The Ride Comfort Test
The ride comfort test on the road is carried out to measure the
vehicle's vibration for the further modeling and evaluating. The
instrumentation system includes acceleration transducers, GPS
velocity transducer (VBox), data acquisition system (DATaRec 4)
with the software (Head Recorder) and the power inverter. The
transducers are used to measure the acceleration of the frame, the cab,
the seat track and the driver seat at different velocities. They are fixed
as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The measurements in the ride comfort test
The vehicle drives on the B class road at constant velocities of 35, 40,
50, 60, 70, 80, 90 km/h. The road must be straight and the slope
should not be too large. Make sure the wind speed is less than 5 m/s
and the tire pressure meet the requirement of the design. Then the
vibration signals could be recorded successfully by the instruments.
Modeling of Cab Air Spring Suspension
The pneumatic system of the cab air spring suspension is mainly
composed of the air spring, the leveling valve, the pipes and the air
source, as shown in figure 2. The leveling valve is used to maintain a
constant height between the vehicle frame and the cab, by exhausting
the air from the air spring chamber to the atmosphere or injecting the
air from the air source to the air spring chamber. It mainly controls
the pressure in the air chamber to adjust its variable loads. It's worth
noting that the leveling valve will not work when the vehicle is under
random excitation, because there is no enough time for the air
flowing through the leveling valve.
Figure 2. The main components of the cab pneumatic suspension
The air spring is usually built as a force-displacement spline in
practical engineering application, but the stiffness characteristic here
is only affected by the deflection of the air spring. In fact, because of
the existing of the hysteresis which is mainly affected by the heat
transfer, the variation of the effective area and the flowing of the air
mass in the pipe [10], the stiffness should be closely related to the
amplitude and the frequency of the dynamic excitation. This section
mainly described the mathematical modeling of the air spring as well
as the test and simulation of the air spring's stiffness.
Mathematical Description of Air Spring
The rolling diaphragm air spring is composed of the cover plate, the
rubberized fabric chamber with thin, flexible walls and the piston.
The chamber will inflate and contact with the cover plate upper as the
inner pressure increasing, and it will result in variable effective area.
The fabric angles and the fabric layers are important factors that
affect the air spring's characteristic. And the different characteristic
stiffness can be acquired by the design of the piston shape, such as
the cylindrical or the contoured piston.
In fact, the gas chamber allows the deflection and the force transfer in
three directions. In this work, the vertical dynamic of the air spring is
focused on. The air spring is modeled as a force element and the mass
is not considered. The force mainly generated by the inner air
pressure acting on the effective area, which can be expressed as
(1)
where Pi is the absolute pressure in the air chamber (Pa), Pa is the
atmospheric pressure (Pa), and Ae is the effective area (m2). Ae is an
equivalent area which can not be measured accurately by the
geometric method. It is affected by the rubberized fabric, the contact
with the cover plate and the shape of the piston mentioned above.
Usually we can measure the force F and the inner pressure Pi while
varying the height h in the experiment, and Ae can be expressed by a
polynomial fitting method as follows:
(2)
where a0, a1, a2, a3 are the polynomial coefficients. And the height h
is changed with respect to the time t, i.e., h=h(t).
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It is difficult to conduct an experiment of measuring the air chamber's
volume with respect to the height h(t). In many studies [10, 12], the
Ae(h) is used to approximate the derivative of the entire volume with
respect to h(t). We thus have:
(3)
where the V0, h0 are the initial volume, the initial height and the
current height of the air chamber, respectively. V1(h) is the current
entire volume of the air chamber.
It is usually hard to acquire the constant-pressure specific heat
coefficient and the constant-volume specific heat coefficient of the
rubber material as well as the heat transfer area in practical
engineering. So the heat transfer between the inner air and the
atmosphere is not considered in the model. The air mass in the air
chamber can be changed when the air moving in the pipe or the
height leveling working. Taking consider of the air chamber alone,
we suppose that there is no air moving in or out of the air chamber.
As a result, the thermodynamic process of the air chamber is treated
as adiabatic, and the gas equation is defined as follows:
(4)
where the polytrophic exponent n is set to 1.4.
The equation (4) is differentiated:
(5)
We can deduce the following expression from the equation above:
(6)
where K is the stiffness of the air spring in the adiabatic process.
Bench Test of the Air Spring
Figure 3 shows the bench test setup for the air spring's stiffness
characteristics briefly. The air is supplied to the air chamber from the
air source. The pressure in the air chamber is measured by the
pressure sensor which located on the pipe between the air chamber
and the air source. By the use of the pressure control valve, the
pressure in the air chamber can be maintained to a desire value.
Before the test, make sure there is no air leakage.
The bottom of the air spring is fixed on the support where the
real-time force can be measured by the force sensor. The upper of the
air spring is fixed with the actuator, the motion of which is controlled
by different input signals. There is a displacement sensor installing on
the actuator to measure its real-time displacement.
Therefore, after the preload is applied on the air spring, either the
static displacement signals or the sinusoidal displacement signals
with different amplitudes and frequencies can be vertically applied to
the air spring by the actuator. The pressure, the vertical force and
deflection of the air spring are acquired to validate the air spring
dynamic model built.
Figure 3. The pneumatic system for the air spring bench test (1 Air
compressor; 2 One-way valve; 3 Air reservoir; 4 Switching valve; 5 Pressure
sensor; 6 Actuator; 7 Displacement sensor; 8 Air spring; 9 Force sensor; 10
Support)
Air Spring Modeling in AMESim
Figure 4 illustrates the dynamic model for stiffness analysis of the air
spring in AMESim. The gas is assumed to be perfect, and the gas
characteristics are defined in the submodel PNGD001. The two
pneumatic diaphragm submodels (PPAD001) are used to represent the
variable effective area, in the form of force-pressure curve acquired in
the bench test. The two pneumatic pistons with moving body submodel
(PNRP17) is to mimic the effects of variable air chamber's volume. The
submodel PNCH012 defines the air chamber with a variable volume
and pressure parameters, which result from the load applied and the
variation of the effective area and the volume. And here the thermal
exchange coeffecient and area are set to 0 respectively to assume that
the peneumatic dynamic process is adiabatic.
Figure 4. Air spring modeling for stiffness analysis in AMESim
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As the same as bench test, the different signals are applied on the
piston of the air spring vertically in the analysis, according to the
working condition. The force and displacement of the air spring are
output to validate the model. The parameters of the air spring are as
shown in the table 1, the initial height h0, initial volume V0 and the
initial effective area Ae0 are acquired from the technical drawing, the
air spring type is Sachs PS30/13×64A2. The pipe length Lp and
diameter dp can be measured easily. And the chamber volume
gradient dV/dz and the effective area gradient dAe / dz are calculated
as the process variable in the model.
Table 1. Parameters of air spring model
Figure 5. The air spring force-deflection curves under different initial
pressures in analysis and the test
Figure 6. The air spring frequency and amplitude dependent stiffness
characteristics under the absolute pressure 7.5 bar
Figure 5 shows the static stiffness characteristics for the air spring in
the analysis and the bench test under different initial absolute
pressures. Figure 6 shows the air spring dynamic stiffness
characteristics dependent on the amplitude and the frequency of the
excitation under the initial absolute pressure 7.5 bar, as the pressure
conforms to the air spring’s practical working condition. It is obvious
that the result in analysis has a good consistency with that of the
bench test and it is not accurate enough for the air spring’s stiffness
characteristics to be only considered as a force-deflection spline.
Co-Simulation with the Cab Multi-Body
Dynamic Model
This section mainly describes the co-simulation method in which the
dynamic air spring is integrated into the cab suspension system. And
the analysis between the co-simulation method and the method which
treated the air spring as a force-deflection spline is compared.
Cab Multi-Body Dynamic Model Integration
The cab multi-body dynamic model is built in ADAMS environment.
The antiroll bar, the front arm and the front support of the cab are
treated as flexible parts. The front damper is built as a single
component force function related to the relative velocity between the
ends of the damper. And there is a lateral damper in the rear of the
cab. The air spring is modeled as a single component force function
related to the air spring deflection. The air spring's damping is not
considered in the model as its damping effect is much smaller than
that of the damper. The cab is connected with the green parts, as
shown in Figure 7, which represents the vehicle frame. The bench
simulation can be conducted by applying the excitation of the frame
measured in the road test to the bottom of the cab.
After the cab multi-body dynamic model is integrated into the
AMESim environment, the air spring deflection is output to the air
spring model built in AMESim as input, and the force calculated
through the air spring model is then output to the cab multi-dynamic
model. This communication is done in every step time. In this method,
the effect of the excitation's amplitude and frequency is considered.
Figure 7. The co-simulation between the cab multi-body dynamic model in
ADAMS and the air spring dynamic model in AMESim
Simulation under Random Excitation
When the vehicle is driving on the irregular road, the vibration
generated from the road roughness, the engine, the tire/wheel and the
driveline will transmit to the cab. In the simulation, the displacement
excitation to the actuators transforms from the acceleration data by
the quadratic integral algorithm in frequency domain. The tri-axial
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acceleration data are measured at the speed of 70 km/h in the road
test above. The displacement input signal of the left front actuator is
shown as Figure 8.
Figure 8. The vertical random input of the left front cab actuator
The input positions were shown as Figure 7. And the vertical, lateral
and the longitudinal excitation should be applied to the actuator at the
same time. The output is the vertical acceleration on the seat track.
The results by the co-simulation method and the spline method are
compared with the test.
As Figure 9 shown, the vertical acceleration Power Spectral Density
(PSD) value on seat track in co-simulation has a good agreement with
the test result, while there is some difference in amplitude of the PSD
curve between 2-4 Hz and 6-10 Hz in the model which the air spring
is built as a spline. As the cab's pitch and vertical motion natural
frequencies distribute between 1.8-4 Hz, the stiffness error of the air
spring modeling method may be amplified at these natural
frequencies. And PSD error between 6-10 Hz may result from the
great difference between the static stiffness and the dynamic stiffness.
It is verified that the co-simulation model is accurate enough for
practical engineering application.
Figure 9. The vertical acceleration PSD value on seat track in test, the spline
air spring model and the co-simulation air spring model
Conclusions
The air spring mathematical model is described and the
corresponding dynamic model is built. Only the vertical dynamic of
the air spring is focused on and the heat transfer and the air mass
changing in air chamber are not considered in the model. Both the
static and dynamic stiffness characteristics of the air spring model in
simulation agree well with the bench test. It reveals that the dynamic
stiffness characteristic of the air spring is affected by the amplitude
and frequency of the excitation.
The co-simulation method which integrates the air spring dynamic
model to the cab multi-body dynamic model is presented. Under the
random excitation, the seat track's vertical acceleration PSD value
acquired by the co-simulation method, as well as the method which
treats the air spring as a force-deflection spline, are compared with
that of the ride comfort test. The result supports the use of the
co-simulation method considering the dynamic stiffness characteristic
of the air spring.
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Contact Information
Yunqing Zhang
Center for Computer-Aided Design
School of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Huazhong University of Science & Technology
Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China
Tel (Fax): +86-27-87543973
zhangyq@hust.edu.cn

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (11172108, 11472112). This financial support is
gratefully acknowledged.

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