AR and ARMA spectral analysis of suspension system of a commercial city bus

Concerning the increasing demand for intelligent and efficient urban vehicle systems with low cost maintainability and high passenger comfort, reliable methods are needed to model and to evaluate the imposed performances. The measurements, vibrations emerging on the wheels and the body, that has ben taken on a city bus are analyzed in the frequency domain. In this paper a parametric spectral analysis (AR/ARMA method) of the suspension system of a commercial city bus is presented. The goal of the analysis is to find the right structure for the systems. Parametric methods used in this paper justify and extend the results obtained by non-parametric ones and provide more accurate results for vibration analysis. One of the main conclusions of the investigations is that the quarter-car model structure based on first principles does not reflect the true frequency domain behavior of the system. Thus the identification of the physical model must be complemented with a suitable uncertainty modeling and classification.