Comfort improvement of a nonlinear suspension using global optimization and in situ measurements

The health problems encountered by operators of off-road vehicles demonstrate that a lot of effort still has to be put into the design of effective seat and cabin suspensions. Owing to the nonlinear nature of the suspensions and the use of in situ measurements for the optimization, classical local optimization techniques are prone to getting stuck in local minima. Therefore this paper develops a method for optimizing nonlinear suspension systems based on in situ measurements, using the global optimization technique DIRECT to avoid local minima. Evaluation of the comfort improvement of the suspension was carried out using the objective comfort parameters used in standards. As a test case, the optimization of a hydropneumatic element that can serve as part of a cabin suspension for off-road machinery was performed.