Nonlinear dynamic modeling and analysis of magnetorheological semi-active suspension for tracked vehicles

The magnetorheological technology has been widely used in automotive applications, whereas less research has been done on tracked vehicles. Hence, this research focuses on the dynamic modeling of the whole system of a tracked vehicle, for analyzing the effect of magnetorheological semi-active suspension on track tension and chassis vibration during driving. Applying the multibody system transfer matrix method and a dynamic recursive method, the dynamic models of the chassis subsystem and the double track subsystems are developed, respectively. These three subsystems are coupled by nonlinear contact forces, where the meshing shock, polygon effect, and rolling effect during contact are also taken into consideration. Subsequently, the normalized Bouc-Wen model is adopted to describe the nonlinear characteristics of rotary magnetorheological dampers. Then, a semi-active suspension control of the tracked vehicle is implemented with rotary magnetorheological dampers and the independent skyhook control method. Finally, numerical simulations are performed under different operating conditions. Comparing with the case of passive suspension, it reveals that, the magnetorheological semi-active suspension not only improves the distribution of the track tension but also effectively reduces the chassis vibration. It provides a theoretical basis for the design and application of magnetorheological semi-active suspensions for tracked vehicles.