Paper Title
Experimental and Simulation Study to Control Stiffness of an Air Spring
Abstract
Air spring is mainly used in commercial vehicles, but lately is also used in higher classes of passenger vehicles as
it gives better riding comfort and stability than conventional springs. Air springs are well-known for their low
transmissibility coefficients and their ability to vary load capacities easily by changing only the gas pressure within the
springs. Air springs can be used for a mechatronic approach in suspension design because of their ability to provide a
controlled variable spring rate and they offer simple and inexpensive automatic levelling. In this paper, an experimental
model of an air spring is designed on which experimental analysis were performed using a step road profile. Simulation of
the mathematical model was done in MATLAb. The experimental and simulation result are compared and studied. Thus, a
reduction in vibration settling time of air spring was achieved.
Keywords:Air springs, conventional springs, mechatronics, transmissibility co-efficient, stiffness