Comparative Research on Optimal Damping Matching of Seat System for an off-Highway Dump Truck

To protect the driver of off-highway dump trucks from the harmful vibration, this paper presents the comparison results to determine the optimal damping of the seat system by different optimization design plans. Three optimization schemes are considered including individually optimizing the damping of the cushion, individually optimizing the damping of the seat suspension, and integrately optimizing both of them. To compare the three optimization schemes, the seat system for an off-highway dump truck is taken as the baseline model. Initially, the parameters of the cushion, the seat suspension, and the air spring for the seat system were determined by corresponding test and the nonlinear dynaimic model of the seat system was created. Then, the model was validated by the test data from the field measurement. Subsequently, on the basis of the measured seat base acceleration, the corresponding damping coefficients under the three schemes were optimized. Finally, the road tests were conducted to verify and compare the degree of the comfort improvement. The results show that there is a relative smaller room for the comfort improvement by individually optimizing the cushion or by individually optimizing the seat suspension. The integrated optimization is the best to improve the comfort.