Design and Control of a Power-Electronic Interface for Regenerative Suspension Systems

Recently, the automobile industry has begun applying an increasing number of systems to recycling wasted energy. One area that demands further research is the recycling and storing of energy in car suspension systems, especially in terms of developing an electronic interface to keep energy flowing bidirectionally. An electronic interface was designed to facilitate control of regenerative forces and store energy after the rectification process. The electronic interface was designed to be a symmetrical-bridgeless boost converter, due to this mechanism having few components and requiring little control effort. The converter was created such that it kept the current and voltage in phase for the maximum power factor. The input into this controller was the generator voltage used to determine the polarity of the pulse-width modulation, considering external road disturbances. Thus, this combination of converter and controller was able to replace an active controller. Variable resistance could be further controlled to manipulate the suspension damping force.