A new semi-active suspension system for racing vehicles

The purpose of this paper is to enhance a passive suspension system with an electro-mechanical device in order to improve performance in terms of comfort, handling, and safety. The main goal is to develop a variable geometry suspension system of simple construction, small in size, which requires reduced energy for its implementation, and that is installable without substantial changes to the original passive suspension system through retrofitting operations. The device will be applied to a vehicle whose geometry is inspired by an open-wheel racing vehicle provided with a push-rod suspension. By means of a kinematic analysis, we evaluated geometry and kinematic properties of the suspension system, followed by CAD modeling and subsequent dynamic analysis. The kinematics of the system is analyzed by using the Lotus Suspension Analysis (LSA) software, while the multibody mechanical model is realized in the SimMechanics MATLAB Environment. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method.