Abstract
Ride comfort requirements are going to increase in the future due to autonomous driving. Therefore improved damper (shock absorber) modeling is needed to get high quality simulation results even at small and random excitation. A further challenge in hardware in the loop applications is the real-timecapability. Mostly simple damper models are acceptable for ride comfort simulations; however they are not able to adequately describe vertical effects, such as stiction. Complex models are usable for ride comfort simulation but they reach the limits of realtime capability. For anadequatetradeoff between real-time application, complexity and validity a new method for characterizing and modeling of a real-time capable damper model for hardware in the loop applications was developed.As a first step toward real-time model improvement, astraight forward modeling method was used. The basic conceptof real-time damper model modeling is tobreak down the damper in three essential force models. These models are a nonlinear gas force model, a nonlinear damper characteristic model and a nonlinear Dahl friction model. The mentionedforce models resultin the modeled overall damper force. In addition to the so called VDA characterization methods, the damper is characterized with respect to small excitations and velocities. With a rear axle damper in hardware in the loop application,researches on ride comfort with a quarter-vehicle model were made. The outcomes show a significant improvement of predictive power at small and random excitationscompared to a common damper model,predictride comfort and the improvement was 12.4 %.With this straight forward modeling method and a slightly increased characterization and parametrization effort it is possible to predict ride comfort even at small and random excitations.