Evaluating the roll performance of a hydraulic-interconnected suspension system for an electric bus

Sammanfattning: Electric buses often have batteries installed on the roof structure to have a better space utilization. This increases the height of the centre of gravity of the vehicle, affecting its roll stability. The existing vehicle setup uses an anti-roll bar to provide the roll stiffness. However, increasing the roll stiffness of the anti-roll bar for providing the required roll stability of an electric bus is limited due to the increase in weight of the anti-roll bar, its material properties and the design constraints. An alternate for the air suspension system is identified through a literature study. The identified system, an interconnected hydro-pneumatic suspension, is modelled analytically and compared to the air spring system. Multi-body simulations are performed to understand the roll performance.\par The thesis work also estimates the system's energy efficiency, and the feasibility of packaging the system within the existing vehicle architecture is studied in CAD software. The roll gradient of the vehicle is shown to improve compared to the existing air-spring system. The study also find that implementation of hydraulic-interconnected system can result in reduction of the unsprung mass of the vehicle.