Magnetorheological Semi-Active Anti-Roll Bar for Automobiles

Aiming at improving safety (anti-roll performance) with also consideration of ride comfort of vehicles during cornering and over road irregularities, magnetorheological (MR) fluid based semi-active anti-roll bar is investigated in this paper. The vehicle roll model with both roll stiffness and roll damping of the vehicle body influenced by the MR anti-roll bar is established to analyze the impact of the torsional stiffness and torsional damping. Combining with the Pareto front of the lateral load transfer ratio of the front axle, the optimal roll stiffness and roll damping of a vehicle are determined, and correspondingly the torsional stiffness and torsional damping of the anti-roll bar are determined. Then, the mathematical model and multibody dynamic model of the anti-roll bar are established, and the simulation of the MR semi-active anti-roll bar model is carried out via MATLAB/Simscape Multibody. CarSim vehicle model equipped with the MR anti-roll bar is built and a fuzzy controller is designed according to the roll angle and roll rate. Co-simulation based on CarSim and MATLAB/Simulink is conducted to analyze the impact of MR anti-roll bar on vehicle roll performance.