Abstract
In recent years, motor vehicles industry has shown a tendency of replacing electromechanical components by mechatronic systems with intelligent and autonomous properties. The integration of hardware components and implementation of advance control functions characterize this replacement. In this paper, we have applied this system approach and system engineering methods in the initial phase of vehicle active suspension development. An emphasis has been placed upon the interrelations between computer-aided simulation and other elements of development process. The benefits of application of active suspension simulation are numerous: reduction of time to market, the new and improved functions of mechatronic components/devices, as well as the increased system reliability. In suspension model development, we have used CAD/CAE tools, as well as the multipurpose simulation programs. For the simulation we have used the one-quarter vehicle model. The modeling was carried out through the state space equation, after which we designed the controller for our system. During this, we considered only the digital systems of automatic regulation.