Improvement of the lateral stability of vehicle suspension incorporating inerter

As a newly proposed two terminals mechanical element, inerter has been successfully applied in vehicle suspension system to improve its vertical vibration isolation performance. The novelty of this paper is to explore the advantages of lateral stability of vehicle suspension by the use of inerter element. A full car model considering the steering condition is built, and the standard fishhook steering input is chosen to test the lateral stability of the suspension system. By considering the ride comfort performance and the rollover resistance performance, three basic suspension layouts incorporating inerter element are optimized by means of genetic algorithm. Constraints of the suspension working space and road holding ability are also taken into account during the optimization. Two steering input condition, namely the sine-steer input and the fishhook steer input are performed to evaluate the vehicle suspension performance. Results show that, the ride comfort and the lateral stability of the vehicle suspension system can be synchronously improved by including the inerter element.