LAUSR

Abstract Energy-harvesting suspension is very important to improve the energy efficiency of vehicles, especially for electric vehicles. A novel energy-harvesting variable/constant damping suspension system with motor based electromagnetic damper is proposed in this paper. The method attempts to make following contributions: The vehicle vibration energy is not only harvested from the suspension system, but also controlled to store in the battery for further usage. Moreover, the damping of the suspension system is able to be controlled as wish, to be constant or to vary with road conditions. The performance comparison with conventional suspension equipped with an oil damper is carried out by simulation and experiments. The effect of the moment of inertia on the suspension performance is investigated. To experimentally validate the proposed method, a scaled quarter car suspension validation platform is established. The experimental results show that the damping can be controlled to be constant as the conventional oil damper, and also be variable as wish. The proposed energy-harvesting suspension can recover energy from vehicle vibration to store in the battery for further usage with high efficiency, which is as high as 35.24% improvement compared with previous studies. Meanwhile, the damping coefficient can also be regulated in real-time accurately.