Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis of vehicle suspension energy harvesting in frequency domain

Mohamed A A Abdelkareem; Abdelrahman B M Eldaly; Mohamed Kamal Ahmed Ali; Ismail M Youssef; Lin Xu

doi:10.1016/j.jare.2020.02.012

Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis of vehicle suspension energy harvesting in frequency domain

J Adv Res. 2020 Feb 22:24:53-67. doi: 10.1016/j.jare.2020.02.012. eCollection 2020 Jul.

Authors

Mohamed A A Abdelkareem^{1

2}, Abdelrahman B M Eldaly^{3

4}, Mohamed Kamal Ahmed Ali^{1

2}, Ismail M Youssef², Lin Xu¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.
² Automotive and Tractors Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, El-Minia 61111, Egypt.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
⁴ Department of Communication and Electronics, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia 61111, Egypt.

Abstract

Regenerative shock absorbers (RSAs) have still not entered production lines despite the promising potentials in energy efficiency and emission reduction. Vibration energy harvesting from vehicle dampers has been replicating the dynamics of passive viscous dampers. An accurate frequency-based analysis of the harvestable energy and dynamics for vehicle suspensions under typical operating conditions is essentially needed for designing functional Vibratory Regenerative Dampers (VRDs). This paper proposes frequency-based parametrical bandwidth sensitivity analyses of both the vehicular suspension dynamics and energy harvesting potentiality in accordance with the Monte Carlo sensitivity simulations. This provides insights into which suspension parameter could highly broaden the harvestable power magnitude, which contributes positively to conceptualizing an efficient design of a wide broad-banded energy harvesting damper leading to improved harvesting efficiencies in different road conditions. The conducted sensitivity analysis included the change in both frequency and amplitude bandwidth of the dissipative damping power, body acceleration, dynamic tire load, and suspension deflection. During the sensitivity simulations, a 2-DOFs (degrees-of-freedom) quarter-car model is considered, being excited by harmonic excitations. The selected suspension parameters were normally randomized according to the Gaussian probability distribution based on their nominal values and a 30% SD (standard deviation) with respect to the uniformly randomized excitation frequency. The results inferred higher sensitivity change in the harvestable power bandwidth versus the excitation parameters, damping rate, and tire properties. Conversely, the harvestable power hardly broadened with respect to the body and wheel masses and the spring stiffness.

Keywords: Automobile suspension; Energy harvesting; Frequency bandwidth; Monte Carlo sensitivity; Vehicle dynamics; Vibrations.