A Study of Seating Suspension System Vibration Isolation Using a Hybrid Method of an Artificial Neural Network and Response Surface Modelling

A reliable prediction model can greatly contribute to the research of car seating system vibration control. The novelty of this paper lies in the development of a hybrid method of an artificial neural network (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM) to predict the peak seat-to-head transmissibility ratio of a seating suspension system and to evaluate its ride comfort for different seat design parameters. Additionally, this method can remove the experimental design of the RSM model. In this paper, four seat design parameters are selected as input parameters and arranged using the central composite design method. The peak transmissibility ratio from seat to head at 4 Hz is chosen as the response target output value. To illustrate this hybrid method, the response target output value of the peak transmissibility ratio is calculated from the frequency response of a five-degrees-of-freedom (5-DOF) lumped-parameter biodynamic seating suspension model. The input design parameters and the response target output values are used to train an ANN to establish the relationship between the seat design parameters and the peak transmissibility ratio. At the same time, the input design parameters and the response target output values predicted by the ANN are used to develop the relationship between the seat design parameters and the peak transmissibility ratio using the response surface method and linear regression models. The hybrid of the ANN and response surface methods makes the planning or design of experiments not essential. The hybrid model of the ANN and response surface method is more accurate and convenient than a linear regression model for the study of seating system vibration isolation.