Performance analysis of vehicle suspension systems with negative stiffness

This work evaluates the influence of negative stiffness on the performances of various vehicle suspension systems, and proposes a re-centering negative stiffness device (NSD). The re-centering NSD consists of a passive magnetic negative stiffness spring and a positioning shaft with a re-centering function. The former produces negative stiffness control forces, and the latter prevents the amplification of static spring deflection. The numerical simulations reveal that negative stiffness can improve the ride comfort of a vehicle without affecting its road holding abilities for either passive or semi-active suspension systems. In general, the improvement degree of ride comfort increases as negative stiffness increases. For passive suspension system, negative stiffness brings in negative stiffness feature in the control forces, which is helpful for the ride comfort of a vehicle. For semi-active suspensions, negative stiffness can alleviate the impact of clipped damping in semi-active dampers, and thus the ride comfort of a vehicle can be improved.