Electromechanical regenerative suspension system design and analysis

Although passive suspension systems used in today's passenger cars are old technology, they continue to be preferred as successful structures considering cost, lightness, simplicity and efficiency factors. The technologies of electric and hybrid vehicles are being developed with a focus on the range parameter, which is directly linked to battery and charging technologies. While the range can be increased slightly with the popular regenerative braking systems, more contribution can be made to the range increase by converting the suspension system into a regenerative system. With a regenerative mechanism to be installed in addition to passive suspension systems, mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy. In this thesis, it is aimed to obtain regenerative DC electrical energy from the motor by converting the suspension linear motion into unidirectional rotational motion with mechanical type conversion and speed increase mechanisms and transferring it to a 12V 72W DC motor through a coupling, designing the mechanism, then analyzing the parts with the Explicit Dynamics module with the finite element method in the Ansys program and verifying the theoretical calculations on a test setup simulating maximum road conditions. The efficiency value was obtained as 77.8% by comparing the theoretical calculations with the data obtained as a result of the tests with the prototype created by 3D printing with ABS 740 High Impact material filament.