Effects of Tyre Pressure on Vehicle Suspension Performance

Incorrect inflation pressures in tyres affects the vehicle handling, passenger comfort and braking conditions in addition to causing a reduction in fuel efficiency and tyre life. To address this problem, mathematical models have been produced and an experimental validation has been carried out. The models were developed with 7-DOF, for a full car system, using MATLAB programs. In the simulation study, the suspension faults have been considered by running the models with a range of inflation pressures at four conditions i.e. at standard pressure (2.3bar) and 1.5bar on the passenger wheel, driver wheel and front wheels. In each case, an analysis was carried out on the performances of the suspension in terms of ride comfort, road handling and stability of the vehicle followed by the presentation of the results obtained. In addition, the influence of parameter variations on transfer functions as a fault detection of suspension has been introduced. This approach has been used when detecting faults of vehicle tyres being under-inflated 35% and also to detect other suspension faults in the future.