Optimization of the Suspension Parameters of a Quarter Car Model with Nonlinear Damper

Suspension system of a vehicle has always been an important part of design consideration in order to ensure passenger safety and ride comfort. Therefore, many studies have been performed for the suspension system analyses considering passive and active types of suspension. However, most of the vehicles are based on the passive suspension system. In this paper, a quarter car model is analyzed considering the passive suspension system, where the damper action is considered quadratic nonlinear. The main contribution of the paper is to optimize the design parameters, viz. spring stiffness and damper coefficient of the suspension in order to improve the ride comfort. Genetic algorithm is selected as the optimization tool. Finally, the model is verified through simulation in MATLAB/Simulink.