Modeling and control of hybrid MR seat damper and whole body vibration evaluation for bus drivers

This paper describes the design, simulation, and performance evaluation of hybrid MR damper on quarter bus semi-active seat suspension coupled with human biodynamic model. Also, the whole body vibration (WBV) exposures were evaluated based on the international standard ISO 2631 (1997), and its parameters were used to measure the level of discomfort for bus drivers. The hybrid MR damper was proposed to enhance the damping force within low current supplied and achieve a fail-soft capability in case of electrical failure. The characteristics of the proposed hybrid MR damper were compared to the conventional MR damper by considering the same size, materials, and current input. The designed damper was incorporated to seat suspension system coupled with biodynamic lumped model, and the governing equations of motion of the full model were derived. Skyhook controller was used to control the amount of current to be supplied to hybrid MR damper. The controlled semi-active hybrid MR and conventional MR seat suspension are compared to uncontrolled system for two types of road excitation. The simulated results show that the driver seat comfort was improved by the skyhook controller than the uncontrolled case. The evaluated WBV showed that the hybrid MR damper can improve the driver life from fairly uncomfortable to little discomfort.