Coil Springs Layer Used to Support a Car Vertical Dynamics Simulator and to Reduce the Maximum Actuation Force

• Main Authors: Dan N. Dumitriu, Cornel Lala
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Eftimie Murgu University of Resita 2015-09-01
• Series: Analele Universităţii "Eftimie Murgu" Reşiţa: Fascicola I, Inginerie
• Subjects: dynamic car simulator; vertical linear actuator; ball screw drive; coil springs layer; spring constant optimization
• Online Access: http://anale-ing.uem.ro/2015/211.pdf

A Danaher Thomson linear actuator with ball screw drive and a realtime control system are used here to induce vertical displacements under the driver/user seat of an in-house dynamic car simulator. In order to better support the car simulator and to dynamically protect the actuator’s ball screw drive, a layer of coil springs is used to support the whole simulator chassis. More precisely, one coil spring is placed vertically under each corner of the rectangular chassis. The paper presents the choice of the appropriate coil springs, so that to minimize as much as possible the ball screw drive task of generating linear motions, corresponding to the vertical displacements and accelerations encountered by a driver during a real ride. For this application, coil springs with lower spring constant are more suited to reduce the forces in the ball screw drive and thus to increase the ball screw drive life expectancy.