The nexus of sustainability and damping: A quasi-zero stiffness and pseudo-piecewise inerter damper for vehicle suspension

This paper proposes a vibration control-energy harvesting damper (VCEHD) for vehicle suspension. The principles used in the proposed VCEHD include quasi-zero stiffness (QZS), mechanical motion rectifier (MMR), and semi-active control. In the dynamic analysis, the authors found that the inherent disengagement and engagement properties of the MMR can undermine the robustness of the system, that is, the inherent properties of the MMR as an energy harvesting device are not conducive to vibration isolation. Therefore, it needs to be restrained. According to the numerical simulation results, VCEHD cannot simultaneously achieve the minimum body displacement and the maximum energy harvest, and the energy harvest performance needs to be partially sacrificed. The experimental results show that the maximum energy output is 14.70 mW/kg, and the minimum displacement transmissibility is 24.32%. Combined with the numerical simulation results, VCEHD can harvest 8.82-97.79 W of power in actual vehicle running, which can provide auxiliary power for intelligent vehicles.