An Energy-Regenerative Suspension System

This paper presents an energy-regenerative suspension device that is able to harvest some of the wasted energy that is generated in a suspension system. For a traditional road vehicle suspension system, shock absorbers are mainly dissipating energy to reduce vibration. The dissipated energy may be collected to improve the fuel economy of road vehicles. In this research, CarSim and Simulink are used to simulate and determine the harvestable energy in a conventional shock absorber under different operating conditions. A conceptual energy-regenerative absorber is designed and tested using a fabricated prototype. A variable speed motor is implemented to adapt the change of stroke length of a mechanism due to the various road roughness. Instruments, e.g., laser tachometer, pressure gauge, ammeter, voltmeter, and stopwatch, are used to collect data. The simulation and prototype testing results indicate that the proposed energy-regenerative suspension device could harvest dissipated energy to improve vehicle fuel economy.