Enhancing the vibratory roller's ride comfort with semi-active seat suspension embedded by quasi-zero stiffness structure

To enhance the vibratory roller's ride quality, semi-active suspension of the driver's seat embedded by the quasi-zero-stiffness-structure (QZSS) has been proposed and researched. A dynamic model of the vibratory roller is established to evaluate the ride quality of the vehicle and the efficiency of the QZSS added into the semi-active seat suspension under the various operating conditions of the vibratory roller. The experiment with the vibratory roller is also given to verify the accuracy of the mathematical model. Two indexes of the root mean square seat acceleration in the time domain (aws) and power spectral density (PSD) seat acceleration in the frequency domain are chosen as the objective functions. The study indicates that the vehicle's ride quality with the semi-active seat suspension is better than that of the passive seat suspension, while the vehicle's ride quality with the semi-active seat suspension embedded by the QZSS is remarkably improved in compared to the semi-active seat suspension without the QZSS. Especially, the aws and maximum PSD of the driver's seat are greatly decreased by 76.0% and 73.4% in comparison with the passive seat suspension, respectively. Consequently, the semi-active seat suspension should be embedded by the QZSS to further improve the vibratory roller's ride quality.