  This study evaluates a suspension design of a passenger car to obtain maximum
rider's comfort when the vehicle is subjected to different road profile or road
surface condition. The challenge will be on finding a balance between the
rider's comfort and vehicle handling to optimize design parameters. The study
uses a simple passive suspension system and an active suspension model
integrated with a pneumatic actuator controlled by proportional integral
derivative (PID) controller in both quarter car and full car models having a
different degree of freedoms (DOF) and increasing degrees of complexities. The
quarter car considered as a 2-DOF model, while the full car model is a 7-DOF
model. The design process set to optimise the spring stiffnesses, damping
coefficients and actuator PID controller gains. For optimisation, the research
featured genetic algorithm optimisation technique to obtain a balanced response
of the vehicle as evaluated from the displacement, velocity and acceleration of
sprung and unsprung masses along with different human comfort and vehicle
performance criteria. The results revealed that the active suspension system
with optimised spring stiffness, damping coefficients and PID gains
demonstrated the superior riding comfort and road holding compared to a passive
suspension system.
