Uncertainty Analysis and Optimization of Quasi-Zero Stiffness Air Suspension Based on Polynomial Chaos Method

Abstract To improve the vibration isolation performance of suspensions, various new structural forms of suspensions have been proposed. However, there is uncertainty in these new structure suspensions, so the deterministic research cannot reflect the performance of the suspension under actual operating conditions. In this paper, a quasi-zero stiffness isolator is used in automotive suspensions to form a new suspension−quasi-zero stiffness air suspension (QZSAS). Due to the strong nonlinearity and structural complexity of quasi-zero stiffness suspensions, changes in structural parameters may cause dramatic changes in suspension performance, so it is of practical importance to study the effect of structural parameter uncertainty on the suspension performance. In order to solve this problem, three suspension structural parameters d 0, L 0 and P c0 are selected as random variables, and the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) theory is used to solve the suspension performance parameters. The sensitivity of the performance parameters to different structural parameters was discussed and analyzed in the frequency domain. Furthermore, a multi-objective optimization of the structural parameters d 0, L 0 and P c0 of QZSAS was performed with the mean and variance of the root-mean-square (RMS) acceleration values as the optimization objectives. The optimization results show that there is an improvement of about 8%−10% in the mean value and about 40%−55% in the standard deviation of acceleration (RMS) values. This paper verifies the feasibility of the PCE method for solving the uncertainty problem of complex nonlinear systems, which provide a reference for the future structural design and optimization of such suspension systems.