Vehicle vibration suppression using an inerter-based mechatronic device

As a two-terminal mechanical element, the inerter has been successfully deployed in various mechanical systems, such as automotives, multi-story buildings, and motorcycles. The introduction of the inerter allows the use of network synthesis to design a passive mechanical network, and can potentially facilitate the identification of practical and high performance mechatronic vibration absorbers. This paper provides an approach for optimal design of both the mechanical and the electrical parts for an inerter-based mechatronic device in vehicle suspension. The system considered includes a mechanical ball-screw inerter alongside an electric motor that is not driven but instead used passively with an electrical load applied across the terminals. The trade-offs in designing the ball-screw inerter and the permanent magnet electric machinery is discussed in detail. Two factors, namely, the coil resistance and the inductor resistance, are taken into account in the performance evaluation. Results show that the improvements in the road holding performance can reach 9.24% for the ideal suspension system with no diverse effect on the ride comfort and suspension travel performance, while a 5.77% improvement can be obtained when the effects of the coil resistance and the inductor are included.