Analysis of Vehicle Ride Comfort and Parameter Optimization of Hydro-pneumatic Suspension for Heavy Duty Mining Vehicle

mining vehicles play a vital role as an indispensable transportation equipment in the mining industry, and its driving performance significantly impacts both the driver's well-being and cargo security. The significant difference in mass between fully-loaded and empty vehicles can lead to variations in their ride comfort. To investigate the vehicle's ride comfort under full and empty loaded conditions, a dynamic model with 7-degrees of freedom (DOF) for the entire vehicle was developed in this study. Additionally, we constructed a four-wheels coupled D-level road stimulation model and a damping-stiffness model for the hydro-pneumatic suspension (HPS) system. Evaluation indicators for ride comfort included vertical, pitch, and roll acceleration values. Our results demonstrate that compared with fully-loaded vehicles, empty-loaded vehicles exhibited an increasing Root-Mean-Square (RMS) value of vertical acceleration by 27.2%, RMS of pitch angle acceleration by 126%, and RMS of roll angle acceleration by 10% for heavy-duty mining vehicles. In order to further optimize the damping stiffness characteristics of HPS and meet the ride comfort requirements under both fully-loaded and empty-loaded conditions, we employed a genetic algorithm to optimize design parameters for the HPS system. The optimized parameters reduced comprehensive vertical vibration acceleration RMS value at the vehicle's center of mass by 48.8% and comprehensive pitch vibration acceleration RMS value by 17.7%. This improvement enhanced the ride comfort of heavy-duty mining vehicles under both fully-loaded and empty-loaded conditions.