Degree:Philosophiae Doctor (Mechanical Engineering)This thesis examines the classic ride comfort vs. handling compromise when designing a vehicle suspension system. A controllable suspension system, that can, through the use of suitable control algorithms, eliminate this compromise, is proposed and implemented.It is a well known fact that if a vehicle suspension system is designed for best ride comfort, then handling performance will suffer and vice versa. This is especially true for the class of vehicle that need to perform well both on-and off-road such as Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV's) and wheeled military vehicles. These vehicles form the focus of this investigation.The ride comfort and handling of a Land Rover Defender 110 Sports Utility Vehicle is investigated using mathematical modelling and field tests. The full vehicle, non-linear mathematical model, built in MSC ADAMS software, is verified against test data, with favourable correlation between modelled and measured results. The model is subsequently modified to incorporate hydropneumatic springs and used to obtain optimised spring and damper characteristics for ride comfort and handling respectively. Ride comfort is optimised by minimising vertical acceleration when driving in a straight line over a rough, off-road terrain profile. Handling is optimised by minimising the body roll angle through a double lane change manoeuvre. It is found that these optimised results are at opposite corners of the design space, i.e. ride comfort requires a soft suspension while handling requires a stiff suspension. It is shown that the ride comfort vs. handling compromise can only be eliminated by having an active suspension system, or a controllable suspension system that can switch between a soft and a stiff spring, as well as low and high damping. This switching must occur rapidly and automatically without driver intervention.A prototype 4 State Semi-active Suspension System (4S 4 ) is designed, manufactured, tested and modelled mathematically. This system enables switching between low and high damping, as well as between soft and stiff springs in less than 100 milliseconds.A control strategy to switch the suspension system between the "ride" mode and the "handling" mode is proposed, implemented on a test vehicle and evaluated during vehicle tests over various on-and off-road terrains and for various handling manoeuvres. The control strategy is found to be simple and cost effective to implement and works extremely well. Improvements of the order of 50% can be achieved for both ride comfort and handling. In hierdie proefskrif word die klassieke kompromie wat getref moet word tussen ritgemak en hantering, tydens die ontwerp van 'n voertuig suspensiestelsel ondersoek. 'n Beheerbare suspensiestelsel, wat die kompromie kan elimineer deur gebruik te maak van toepaslike beheeralgoritmes, word voorgestel en geïmplementeer.Dit is 'n bekende feit dat, wanneer die karakteristieke van 'n voertuigsuspensiestelsel ontwerp word vir die beste moontlike ritgemak, die hantering nie n...

SUMMARYThis paper is concerned with the modelling of nonlinear elastic multi-body systems discretized using the finite element method. The formulation uses Cartesian co-ordinates to represent the position of each elastic body with respect to a single inertial frame. The kinematic constraints among the various bodies of the system are enforced via the Lagrange multiplier technique. The resulting equations of motion are stiff, non-linear, differential-algebraic equations. The integration of these equations presents a real challenge as most available techniques are either numerically unstable, or present undesirable high frequency oscillations of a purely numerical origin. An approach is proposed in which the equations of motion are discretized so that they imply conservation of the total energy for the elastic components of the system, whereas the forces of constraint are discretized so that the work they perform vanishes exactly. The combination of these two features of the discretization guarantees the stability of the numerical integration process for non-linear elastic multi-body systems. Examples of the procedure are presented.

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One of the big challenges in machining is replacing the cutting tool at the right time. Carrying on the process with a dull tool may degrade the product quality. However, it may be unnecessary to change the cutting tool if it is still capable of continuing the cutting operation. Both of these cases could increase the production cost. Therefore, an effective tool condition monitoring system may reduce production cost and increase productivity. This paper presents a neural network based sensor fusion model for a tool wear monitoring system in turning operations. A wavelet packet tree approach was used for the analysis of the acquired signals, namely cutting strains in tool holder and motor current, and the extraction of wear-sensitive features. Once a list of possible features had been extracted, the dimension of the input feature space was reduced using principal component analysis. Novel strategies, such as the robustness of the developed ANN models against uncertainty in the input data, and the integration of the monitoring information to an optimization system in order to utilize the progressive tool wear information for selecting the optimum cutting conditions, are proposed and validated in manual turning operations. The approach is simple and flexible enough for online implementation.