Power recovery property of electrical active suspension systems

This paper addresses the application of electric motors as the primary actuators of an active suspension system of a road vehicle. In particular, the authors focus on the power recovery property of such a system. A quarter-car model with a linear quadratic optimal control law is used as a model in their study. The amount of potentially recoverable power and suspension force are determined based on a power spectral density analysis and computer simulations. They determined that an active system on a mid-size car can potentially recover up to 100 W power per wheel in a highway driving condition. However, such a system consumes power at lower speed city driving condition.