DESIGN AND APPLICATION OF NONLINEAR ENERGY SINK IN VIBRATION CONTROL OF A HALF-VEHICLE SYSTEM

To enhance ride comfort, a novel suspension control scheme for a half-vehicle model is proposed. The core of this scheme involves the distributed arrangement of nonlinear energy sinks (NESs), with one NES individually attached to the front body, rear body, and front and rear wheels. The dynamic equations of the half-vehicle model coupled with NESs are established based on the Newton's second law. The approximate analytical solution of the system is obtained using the harmonic balance method, and the accuracy is verified using the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. Subsequently, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, the amplitude-frequency response of the original half-vehicle system, the system with NESs installed only on the front and rear bodies, and the system with the proposed control scheme are compared. Furthermore, the effects of NESs mass, nonlinear stiffness, and damping on vibration reduction performance are investigated. The results indicate that, without altering the additional mass of NESs, the proposed scheme achieves vibration control of both the body and wheels through the distributed arrangement of NESs, thereby improving vehicle comfort and safety. For the wheels, increasing the NESs mass is beneficial for enhancing vibration reduction efficiency, while increasing the nonlinear stiffness and damping may deteriorate vibration reduction efficiency. For the body, increasing the NESs mass or decreasing the damping is also beneficial for improving vibration reduction efficiency, while increasing the nonlinear stiffness may deteriorate vibration reduction efficiency. The proposed scheme provides valuable guidance for the design of vehicle suspension systems and also brings improvements in ride comfort as well as vehicle performance.