Optimum suspension unit design for enhancing the mobility of wheeled armored vehicles

At the concept design stage of an armored vehicle, most design effects focus on firing accuracy, mobility and physical properties of the vehicle which are directly related to the firing power. This paper addresses an optimal design of the suspension unit of a four-wheeled armored vehicle to maximize the mobility performance after firing, which is characterized by the stabilizing time and the vertical acceleration of the driver’s seat after firing. For the numerical analysis and design, a half-car dynamic model consisting of four degrees and four design variables, spring and damping coefficients of suspension and tire is constructed. The response surface functions (RSFs) of both the stabilizing time and vertical acceleration are approximated through the dynamic analysis of the four-degree half-car model. The objective function is defined by a weighted linear combination of the stabilizing time and the vertical acceleration, and the resulting optimization of the vehicle mobility is carried out by the PLBA algorithm. To support the validity of the proposed optimization procedure, illustrative numerical experiments are also performed.