Suspension systems play an important role in vehicles. These systems provide
passenger comfort and vibration isolation from road bumps. Thus an efficient finite
element model is required to study and analyze the dynamic response of these
suspension systems. This paper presents a finite element model to analyze the
dynamic response of double wishbone vehicle suspension system taking into
consideration both links and joints flexibilities. Links are modeled using plane
frame element based on Timoshenko beam theory (TBT) kinematic relations. On
the other hand, the revolute joint element, developed in ANSYS, is adopted to
model joints flexibility.Both internal viscoelastic and external viscous as well as the
modal proportional damping models are adopted to simulate the damping effect.
The resulting dynamic finite element equations of motion are solved using
Newmark numerical technique. The proposed numerical methodology is checked
by comparing the obtained results with the developed analytical solution and good
agreement is noticed. The applicability of the proposed procedure is demonstrated
by operating parametric studies to illustrate the effects of the road irregularity
configurations, the vehicle travelling velocity, as well as the material damping on
the dynamic response characteristics of the double wishbone suspension system.
The obtained results are helpful for the mechanical design of these structural
systems.