Recently pollution and energy problem has become a significant issue. Vehicles especially takes a large role in both matters. To solve these two issues, studies must be conducted in order to improve the energy efficiency as well as comfort and stabili...
Recently pollution and energy problem has become a significant issue. Vehicles especially takes a large role in both matters. To solve these two issues, studies must be conducted in order to improve the energy efficiency as well as comfort and stability of the vehicle.
The structure of manual suspension is most simple, and the cost is low so has high reliability. There is no need to control the vibration mode, so the energy cost is zero. However it cannot respond to continuously changing value of frequency from the road, making limits of improving the comfort and stability. Active suspension attaches an actuator between the cat body and axle to emit random force at will to control the comfort and stability of the vehicle, increasing the vehicle's static and dynamic characteristics. But the device is complicated and costs are high, and too much energy is consumed to control the vibration. Semi-active suspension uses variable damper to control the damper according to the magnitude of vibration and frequency from the road to improve the stability and comfort. Although this method has limits of improving the stability and comfort relatively to active suspension, the structure is simple and energy efficiency is high. As seen in above, there has been researches to improve the comfort and stability, but no studies concerning the use of vibration energy to convert into electrical energy have been done.
This thesis proposed a method to improve the comfort and gaining electrical energy at once. This method uses vibration system that consists the vibration energy harvester to produce resonance in same frequency as axle's natural frequency and attaching it to manual suspension's axle. The method can increase the level of comfort than manual suspension, and can gain electrical energy from vibration energy harvester.