A comparative study of active and passive suspensions for a quarter car model

The suspension system of a 2 DOF quarter car model is studied and simulated in Simulink. A passive suspension system is compared with an active suspension with constant and adapted references. A sinusoidal bump & pit, and a step bump with 0.07 m amplitude are used as the road disturbances. The Simulink model and the results obtained are reported. It is noted that the active suspension system gives superior results for all input road profiles in comparison to the passive suspension. With active suspension, there is about 60% reduction in the maximum suspension displacement. In addition, unlike the passive suspension, the active suspension does not oscillate much. For the active suspension, the velocity by which the suspension displaces is also reduced by approximately 40%. Furthermore, the active suspension with constant reference entails lowest displacement though at the expense of higher actuator force.