Comfort improvement by passive and semi-active hydropneumatic suspension using global optimization technique

The arising health problems of operators of off-road vehicles point out that still a lot of effort has to be put into the design of effective seat and cabin suspensions. The comfort problem originates form the vibrations transmitted to the driver caused by the unevenness of the road or soil profile. The paper develops a method for optimizing suspension systems using the global optimization technique DIRECT. Evaluation of the comfort improvement of the suspensions is done using the objective comfort parameters used by the norms. The design procedure is tested on a hydropneumatic suspension that can serve as a cabin suspension for off-road machinery. The evaluation shows that the vibration levels can be reduced by 90%, resulting in a drastic comfort improvement.