Riding Comfort Simulation with air ride seat for heavy duty vehicle

The design of driver's seat suspension of the commercial truck differs from the one of the passenger car. The vibration and the structural characteristics of the suspension are consequently quite different. Unlike passenger cars, the vibration frequency of commercial truck suspensions is considerably low at 1 to 3 Hz. (Mayton, 2006). The truck seat has an air ride seat. The structural design of air ride seat at heavy-duty vehicle includes serial and parallel combinations of the shock absorber, air spring, and PU foam pad to achieve a good vibration damping. The 1D lumped network solution is an effective design tool with the multi-physical subcomponents. And this also enables a direct coupling into the system modeling of the vehicle body for an optimal calibration of engineering parameters taking the relevant dynamic performance of neighboring parts into account. The mechanical characteristics of each component and their assembly were identified for the 1D modeling. The result of validation and verification of the proposing 1D model of the air ride seat is also introduced.