Design and Analysis of Electromagnetic Shock Absorbers

grabcad

The objectives of this project are to investigate energy recovery from vehicle suspensions by answering two questions: (1) How can the wasted energy be converted to electricity? (2) How efficiently can the energy be converted? This is achieved by designing and modelling a retrofit rack–pinion-based electromagnetic regenerative shock absorber, which can generate electric power from the road-induced suspension vibration of vehicles. The components used in the Electromagnetic Shock Absorber are modelled using CATIA V5 (Computer Aided Three Dimensional Interactive Application) software. Structural analysis is done by considering tyre weight, bike weight and weight of two persons. The proposed shock absorber design works on rack and pinion mechanism to generate power, where the linear movement of the shock absorber is converted to rotary movement. Through bevel gears, the rotational motion of the pinion gear is transferred by 90◦ to the rotational motion of the generator. Regenerative shock absorbers have the potential to not only harvest the kinetic energy traditionally wasted in suspension vibration, but for use as actuators for suspension control as well. Moreover, it can increase fuel efficiency by reducing the electrical demand to the car alternators and, thus, reduce the engine’s workload. Hence this report explains its working, modelling and analysis of the parts. To validate the strength of the design, structural analysis on major parts of the shock absorber is done using ANSYS WORKBENCH 14. By observing the analysis results, the analyzed stress values are less than their respective yield stress values. So the design is considered to be safe.