Computational study on the effect of a conical spring on handling of buses at low speed

Automobile Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, SASTRA, Thanjvaur, India

^* Corresponding author: aravi1995.05@gmail.com

Abstract

Handling and ride characteristic are dependent to a large extent on the characteristic of a vehicle’s suspension system. This work explores the effect of the use of conical spring in place of conventional cylindrical profiled helical spring design in the handling of a bus at low speeds through full vehicle multi-body simulations. The bus was modelled using standard template available in ADAMS^TM software package. The vehicle inertial properties were verified against properties in literature. The conventional spring characteristic (L) from ADAMS^TM database was taken as reference and compared it with a non-linear characteristic (NL) based on literature data. The planned maneuover was to execute a right turn based on standard road dimension inputs from IRC 86:1983 at a constant speed of 30 km/hour with acceleration controlled by software module. Chassis displacements, displacements of spring were tracked to understand handling and ride quality. The variation of chassis displacements showed a significant improvement in ride characteristic of vehicle with most vibrations being damped in NL at time lower than the L characteristic suspension. All through the study, lateral acceleration was well within the rollover threshold and tire interaction forces did not exhibit any significant changes.