Development of a magneto-rheological active damping system to improve the yaw response of a racing vehicle

This thesis presents the development of the first ever racing vehicle yaw control system that utilises active dampers to provide a corrective yaw moment through the manipulation of tyre contact patch loads during transient vehicle handling manoeuvres. The study has focused on the following three key areas, 1) The design of a magneto-rheological (MR) damper The damping requirements of a racing vehicle are investigated. A prototype magneto- rheological damper is proposed and evaluated using magnetic finite element techniques. The manufactured prototype is subsequently tested and benchmarked against a passive racing damper and a commercially available MR damper. Consideration is given to the current driver circuit required, the damper response time to increasing and decreasing demand signals and sealing and bearing requirements. 2) A novel yaw damping strategy utilising active MR dampers This work proposes a novel active damping strategy for vehicle yaw control. The dampers are used to control both the pitch and roll damping distribution during transient vehicle handling manoeuvres. It is shown that this approach improves the functionality of previous damper based yaw control that only considered roll damping distribution. 3) In-Vehicle implementation and track testing An in-vehicle damper control system is developed using hardware that has not previously been employed in this application. This study is the first to apply a damper based yaw control system to a racing vehicle. Track testing of the racing vehicle fitted with the damper control system is used to demonstrate the potential improvements achievable in the context of lap time, subjective driver feel and measured yaw error.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo