Preliminary Selection and Parameter Optimization of Nonlinear Parallel Suspension Based on Vehicle Ride Comfort

In this paper, a novel method for preliminary selection and optimization of nonlinear parallel suspension is proposed. The research object of this paper is an auto-guided container transfer vehicle (AGV), which needs to meet the demand of lifting a short distance of the container. A new parallel suspension with rubber spring and hydro-pneumatic spring in parallel is designed to realize the lifting function, aiming at the problem of the poor ride comfort of the original vehicle. According to the vehicle parameters and suspension requirements, the rubber springs, whose mathematical model is difficult to establish, is selected firstly, and then the mathematical model of the rubber spring is obtained by fitting its experimental data. Next, the parameters of the hydro-pneumatic springs are initially selected. In MATLAB/SIMULINK, the half-car mathematical model of the vehicle is established, and the parameters of hydro-pneumatic springs was optimized by Genetic algorithm (GA). The result of simulations suggest that proposed method is promising for improving the ride comfort of the vehicle on the basis of satisfying the vehicle lifting function.