Magneto-Rheological Actuator for Active Vehicle Suspensions – Year two

Increased interest in active vehicle suspensions has been shown in recent years as active suspensions improve ride comfort and handling over passive suspensions. Active suspensions replace passive fluidic dampers with highly controllable actuators to minimize transmission of road induced disturbances and actively control vehicles roll and pitch. However, integration of active suspensions in vehicles is hindered by conventional actuators that do not meet requirements of cost, bandwidth, weight, power consumption and reliability. The main goal of this MITACS-Elevate fellowship project is to assess the feasibility of using magneto-rheological actuators as an effective solution for active vehicle suspensions. Such actuators have been demonstrated in past research to be a reliable, lightweight and cost-effective alternative to conventional actuators for applications involving high frequency force or vibration control. The project will lead to a design of an automobile front suspension using MR actuators and to its experimental characterization on a full-scale prototype.

Faculty Supervisor:

Patrice Masson

Student:

Patrick Chouinard

Partner:

Exonetik Inc

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Automotive and transportation

University:

Program: