Design and Dynamic Analysis of a Flexible Inertia Device for Vehicle Suspensions

The inertia device has gained widespread utilization in vibration isolation systems owing to its capability of effectively changing the inherent frequencies of the system. This paper presents a flexible inertia (FI) device that consists of the transmission device, electromagnetic damping device and flywheel. The inertial characteristics of the FI device can be designed in series with an electromagnetic damper and a flywheel. Through this design, FI device can reduce the rigid impacts during severe vibrations and can set different initial damping to get different equivalent inertance. The dynamic model of the proposed FI device is integrated into the quarter-vehicle suspension. The parametric analysis is carried out to determine the key inertia parameters that influence the vibration isolation performance. Simulation results indicate that the suspension system with the FI device can obtain better vibration isolation performance compared with the passive vibration isolation system.