Study on Electromagnetic Damper for Automobiles with Nonlinear Damping Force Characteristics

This paper presents study on the electromagnetic damper (EMD) with nonlinear damping force characteristics for automobiles and its road tests. The authors proposed EMD for automobiles for improved ride comfort and compatibility between stability and isolation. General dampers for automobiles have nonlinear damping force characteristics to satisfy this compatibility. The power electronic circuits for the EMD were developed to achieve any nonlinear damping force characteristics. These circuits have the following characteristics: 1) No external power source is required for circuits because the EMD regenerate power, 2) High controllability and tuning of nonlinear damping characteristics were made. The experiments with shaker and road tests proved that the proposed EMD system achieves the nonlinear damping force characteristics for automobiles, and has suitable ability for automobiles dampers.