Decoupling tyre and suspension via frequency based substructuring

Noise and vibrations transmitted through the tyre then, subsequently, the suspension has a major impact on the overall ride quality in a passenger vehicle. Much work has been done in the past to evaluate ride comfort subjectively, but recent years have seen a marked increase in the development of objective/analytical methods. The following paper presents a method to mathematically separate the vibrational properties of the tyre and the suspension in order to further understand the mechanism of vibration transmission between the two. Frequency based substructuring (FBS) techniques will be used to decouple the tyre subsystem from the suspension subsystem. In this work, these FBS techniques are applied first to decouple the equations of motion of a simple quarter car system as a proof of concept. Then, a more generalised approach is taken which will be applicable to experimental data.