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Design Optimization of Suspension Kinematic and 2014-01-0394

Compliance Characteristics Published 04/01/2014

Yong-Sub Yi, Joonhong Park, and Kyung-Jin Hong

Hyundai Motor Co.

CITATION: Yi, Y., Park, J., and Hong, K., "Design Optimization of Suspension Kinematic and Compliance Characteristics,"
SAE Technical Paper 2014-01-0394, 2014, doi:10.4271/2014-01-0394.

Copyright © 2014 SAE International

Abstract characteristic of a vehicle in cornering maneuver can be

estimated by examining steer change rate when vehicle rolls
In the early stage of vehicle development process, it is
and distribution of roll stiffness between front and rear axles
customary to establish a set of goals for each kinematic and
and so on. In addition, it is well known that the suspension
compliance (K&C) characteristic and try to find out design
stiffness in lateral direction is strongly correlated with vehicle
variables such as the location of hard points and bushing
response onto the steering input and stiffness in longitudinal
stiffness which can achieve these goals.
direction is correlated with impact harshness performance.
However, since it is very difficult to find out adequate set of
From this reason, it is usual to establish a set of target on each
design variables which satisfy all the goals, many engineers
K&C characteristic at the very first design stage and try to
should rely on their own experiences and intuitions, or repeat
determine design variables such as the location of hard points
trial and error to design a new suspension and improve old
and bushing stiffness in order that these targets can be
one.
achieved all together. In the past, since the prediction of K&C
characteristics of a new suspension was quite difficult, the
In this research, we develop a suspension design process by
verification of new design could be carried out only after the
which suspension K&C characteristic targets can be achieved
physical model was built, and consequently it took enormous
systemically and automatically. For this purpose, design
time and cost to develop a new suspension.
optimization schemes such as design of experiments (DoE)
and gradient-based local optimization algorithm are adopted.
In the other hand, prediction speed and accuracy gets quite
higher in these days, after multi-body simulation (MBS) tools
Firstly, sensitivity analysis is carried out using DoE and then,
such as ADAMS/Car is widely used. Nevertheless, even with
according to the analysis results, the whole problem is divided
these powerful computational aids, finding out an adequate set
into two partial problems which are independent of each other.
of design variables is still very difficult and time-consuming job,
And then, these two independent multi-objective optimization
for a certain design variable might affect various K&C
problems are solved using gradient-based optimization
characteristics and K&C characteristics are not independent of
algorithm.
each other. Therefore, most of engineers should rely on their
own experiences and intuitions, or repeat trial and error to
With this two-stage process, K&C characteristics of McPherson
design a new suspension and improve old one, and sometimes
strut type front suspension are optimized successfully. Since
they even fail to find the optimal set.
the size of a partial problem is quite small compared to original
one, we can obtain computational efficiency and fast
If there exists a systematic and automatic process which can
convergence as well.
help to find such an optimal design, it will make the suspension
development process much easier and faster and more
Introduction efficient. For this purpose, there have been many studies on
the application of design optimization scheme for suspension
Kinematic and compliance (K&C) characteristics of the vehicle
design. Datousaïd et al. [1] applied genetic algorithm to
suspension are key parameters from which many aspects of
optimize kinematic characteristics of the suspension of a
ride and handling(R&H) performances of a vehicle can be
railway urban vehicle and Sancibrian et al. [2] and Reinalter et
estimated and explained. For example, understeering
al. [3] used gradient-based optimization algorithm for the
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double wishbone and McPherson type front suspension. Table 1. List of the location of hard points to be modified.
However, they considered only a limited number of kinematic
characteristics and did not consider compliance characteristics
at all. Since the location of hard points affects not only
kinematic characteristics but also compliance characteristics,
the optimized results obtained by these schemes cannot be
regarded as the final solution of suspension design. Moreover,
in case the compliance characteristics are included in the
optimization target, the number of objectives becomes very big
and consequently the complexity of multi-objective function
gets extremely large.
Objectives
In this research, we tried to establish a new methodology in There are tens of K&C characteristics which are relevant to the
which one can find the set of design variables which meets R&H performances of a vehicle. Normally, each carmaker has
both kinematic and compliance characteristics targets by its own selected list of criteria for these characteristics, which is
separating the whole optimization problem into partial ones. determined from abundant vehicle development experiences
We design a new McPherson type front suspension using this accumulated for a long time.
methodology and the result is very promising.
In this research, 8 characteristics, which are known to affect
Problem Definition R&H performances most greatly, are selected for objectives to
be optimized. As listed in Table 2, 4 of them are kinematic and
For the test problem, the optimization of a McPherson type
the rest 4 of them are compliance characteristics.
front suspension for a newly developed C-class hatchback is
carried out. At the initial design stage, we originally intended to Table 2. List of the K&C characteristics to be optimized.
carry over the suspension of cousin car which shares the same
platform. Considering the increasing needs for more dynamic
handling and more comfortable ride performances for this class
vehicle in the market, the original suspension is not competent
enough in many aspects and needs to be improved from the
fundamental.

The shape of the suspension and the location of hard points

considered in this research are shown in Figure 1.

1st Design Stage - Sensitivity Analysis

Figure 1. Shape of the target suspension and the location of each
design variable (hard point)
Design Variables
As shown in Figure 1, the number of hard points to be modified
is 6 and consequently the total number of design variables
becomes 18, since the location of every hard point has
3-dimensional coordinates. Because body design could not be
changed at that development stage, only hard points which
would not lead to body design modification are chosen. The
detailed definition of each hard point is listed in Table 1.
The first stage of design process is sensitivity analysis. Many
global optimization algorithms such as genetic algorithm do not
need sensitivity analysis. Even if gradient-based optimization
algorithm is applied, the calculation of sensitivity is hidden in
the iteration step and the calculated values are not shown
externally. So, suspension designers normally tend to pay very
little attention to the sensitivity itself. However, study on the
sensitivity analysis results helps to understand the
characteristics of suspension more thoroughly and find key
clues for the improvement of target suspension in efficient way.
Design of Experiments (DoE)
In order to analyze sensitivity effectively, DoE is adopted.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is also carried out to examine
nonlinearity and interactions between design variables. L81(340)
orthogonal array is selected for 18 design variables (6 locations
× 3-dimensional coordinates). And 3-level variance (initial
location and ± 10 mm) for each design variable is considered.
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In some of former researches [2,3], Pearson's correlation
coefficients are regarded as sensitivity metrics. However, they
are metrics which represent only the linearity between input
and output variables and do not show any quantitative
information. Even if the influence of design variable on a
certain property is very small, correlation coefficient can be
very large (nearly one) only if their relationship is linear
enough.
In the other hand, ANOVA can show the quantitative
contribution of each design variable by partitioning the total
sum of squares into components generated by changes on
design variables [4]. From this viewpoint, ANOVA is much more
effective and adequate tool for the understanding of the
influence of each design variable.
Sensitivity Analysis Results
Sensitivity analysis results are shown in Table 3. The number
in each cell represents the proportion of effect of the
corresponding design variable in terms of sum of square in
percent, and consequently larger number means bigger effect.
The cells which have relatively large number (over 10%) are
shadowed in grey color. Reviewing the table, two major
observations can be found. The first one is that only 26 cells
are shadowed among 144 cells (8 characteristics × 18 design
variables) in total. It means that only a few number of design
variables have most of influence and we don’t need to consider
all the design variables in optimization process as a result. If
the optimization process is carried out with fewer design
variables, it can be accelerated much.
The other one is more interesting. If Table 3 is divided into two
parts of the first 4 rows and the last 4 rows, there are no
common columns shadowed in grey color between two parts.
That means the most influential design variables on the
kinematic characteristics do not affect compliance
characteristics much, and vice versa. Therefore the original
optimization problem for 8 suspension characteristics can be
divided two partial and independent problems, namely, one for
kinematic and the other for compliance. Note that this complete
independence between kinematic and compliance
characteristics cannot be expected always. For further study,
we are now trying to apply the same design process for other
suspension systems such as multilink suspension for rear axle.
In order to check if there exist any interactions between design
variables, another ANOVA with L16(215) orthogonal array is
conducted again for major 5 design variables for two partial
problem respectively. The results for compliance characteristics
are shown in Table 4 and it can be easily found that there are
no major interactions. The results for kinematic characteristics
show the same results, but are omitted in this paper for lack of
space.
2nd Design Stage - Optimization
The second stage of design process is the optimization. In
order to find the optimum effectively, gradient-based
optimization algorithm is applied for both partial problems.

Table 3. Sensitivity analysis results represented in percent from ANOVA. (A∼F: location of hard point as shown in Figure 1, 1∼8 : K&C characteristics as
listed in Table 2). Relatively large number (over 10%) is shadowed in grey color.

Table 4. Interaction between design variables on the suspension compliance characteristics.

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Target Setting objective.” It is well known that composing multi-objective

The final goal of suspension design is to achieve the ride and function in proper form plays a key role for efficient optimization
handling performance target of a vehicle under development. process. Since each target value has different feature - some
Although the best and the most intuitive method to estimate of them should have specific values (nominal-the-best) and
whether the target will be achieved or not is to predict various others should be minimized (smaller-the-best) or maximized
kind of metrics which assess the performance of vehicle rather (larger-the-best) - it is required to build a proper multi-objective
directly such as response time and overshoot ratio from step function so that it can represent all these different features in
steer test, understeer gradient from steady state circular turn one equation. Considering this property, the objective function f
test, floor acceleration variation from impact harshness test is defined as follows in this research:
and etc., it is very hard to predict them accurately due to so
many uncertainties and nonlinearities which are not considered
in the simulation model. Also, since there are various kinds of
test and metric, it is inefficient and time-consuming to use (1)
these metrics as objectives in the optimization process.
fi represents the contribution of each K&C characteristic gi onto
Instead of using direct metrics, K&C characteristics are chosen the multi-objective function and is defined as follows:
as objectives to be optimized in this research. As mentioned in
earlier section, not only many aspects of vehicle performances When gi is nominal-the-best and its goal is ,
can be estimated, but also the accuracy of prediction by MBS
tools is very good. These features of K&C characteristic
simulation make the optimization process more efficient and
stable.
(2)

Still there is an issue of how the target value for each where
characteristic should be determined. To resolve this, subjective
comparison evaluation and bench-marking results of
competitor's vehicle and original prototype vehicle are used.
K&C characteristics of each vehicle are measured in the same
testrig and subjective evaluations are carried out by several
(3)
expert test drivers. We try to find out what is the main cause for
difference in evaluation results through referring the K&C and when gi is smaller-the-best or larger-the-best
characteristic measurement data. Then the specific target
values for each characteristic are set with full use of a long
time experiences together.

List of final target is shown in Table 5. Note that the specific (4)
value is replaced by relative value for confidentiality.
where
Table 5. List of the target values for each K&C characteristic. (Category
- N: Nominal-the-best, C: Constraint, S: Smaller-the-best. 1∼8: K&C
characteristics as listed in Table 2)

(5)

and

(6)

si is the scaling factor and is used to normalize each K&C

characteristic.

Since the optimized solution for a multi-objective function must

Objective Function
Each K&C characteristic to be optimized has different feature.
Namely, some of them should have specific values and the
others should be either minimized or maximized. Moreover,
since there are 4 target objectives for each partial problem
respectively, the objective function should be so called “multi-
be so called “Pareto optimum” and there exist many local
optima. When the objective function is composed of smaller-
the-best and larger-the-best terms only, the number of local
optima tends to get larger. In case that it is composed of
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nominal-the-best terms only, it is clear that there exists the
global optimal point where f goes to zero when every gi
achieves its goal only if it is located in feasible domain.
In this viewpoint, we try to minimize the number of smaller-the-
best and larger-the-best term included in the objective function
by changing them as constraints. As a result, the first partial
problem for kinematic characteristics is composed of 3
nominal-the-best terms and 1 constraint, and the second one
for compliance characteristics is composed of 1 smaller-the-
best term and 3 constraints as categorized in Table 5.
Optimization Results
As the optimization algorithm, Sequential Two-point Diagonal
Quadratic Approximate Optimization (STDQAO) presented in
the optimization software PIAnO is selected. This algorithm is
developed for the optimization problem which has nonlinearity
and a kind of sequential approximate optimization technique
[5].
The optimization process is carried out with full-size MBS in the
loop. Since the number of design variables concerned for each
partial problem is only 6 respectively and that makes the size
of the problem very small, computation time is affordable even
without using meta-model such response surface method
(RSM).
Optimized results are listed in Table 6, and it can be observed
that every K&C characteristic matches well with each target
value. Considering the producibility, the final design is modified
a little from the optimum, and its properties are listed in Table 6
as well. Even if they are somewhat different with optimal value,
still much more improved from initial prototype design.
Table 6. Optimized results and properties of final design
Other Applications
In this research, only one type of front suspension is optimized
for example problem. However, there are many other
applications where the proposed scheme can be applied.
For example, only with sensitivity analysis using DoE, we can
verify the robustness of suspension onto the production
distribution and tolerances. Though the performance of a
vehicle is predicted before prototype production and tested with
prototype unit on the assumption that all the parts are
produced and assembled perfectly according to design guides,
there must be distribution in geometry such as length and the
location of hole and properties such as bushing stiffness due to
tolerance and error in manufacturing process. It is almost
impossible to verify the robustness by testing actual vehicle
with every possible combination of distribution and driving
conditions. The worst combination can be found through
sensitivity analysis proposed in this paper, and if the effect of
this is predicted and then tested in real vehicle, the robustness
can be verified efficiently.
Summary/Conclusions
Two-stage optimization process for suspension K&C
characteristics is proposed in this research. In the first stage,
sensitivity analysis is carried out using DoE scheme, and then
the whole problem is divided into 2 partial independent
problems. In the second stage, multi-objective function is
defined for effective optimization process, and then gradient-
based algorithm is applied to each partial problem. Since the
number of design variables of each partial problem is much
smaller compared to that of original problem, the optimization
process is much faster and more stable.
This scheme is verified by designing new McPherson strut type
front suspension. It shows successful results, even though total
number of objective is relatively high compared to that
considered in former researches. Moreover, not only kinematic
but also compliance characteristics are optimized
simultaneously.
This scheme can be used to verify the robustness of
suspension characteristics to the production distribution and
tolerances.
References
1. Datoussaid, S., Hadjit, R., Verlinden, O. and Conti, C.,
“Optimization design of multibody systems by using genetic
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2. Sancibrian, R., Garcia, P., Viadero, F., Fernandez, A.
and De-Juan, A., “Kinematic design of double-wishbone
suspension systems using a multiobjective optimization
approach,” Vehicle System Dynamics 48(7):793-813, 2010,
doi:10.1080/00423110903156574.
3. Reinalter, W., Wölfel, G., Angrosch, B. and Plöchl, M.,
“Application of Design of Experiments and numerical
optimization in the kinematics design process of
suspension systems,” Chassis.Tech Plus 2011:237-252,
2011.
4. Mason, R. L., Gunst, R. F. and Hess, J. L., “Statistical
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5. PIAnO User's Manual, Framax Co. Ltd.
Contact Information
Corresponding author:
Yong-Sub Yi
miserere@hyundai.com
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