Comparative Analysis of Passive, Hybrid, and Harvester-Based Suspension Architectures for Energy Harvesting and Ride Comfort

Regenerative suspensions can recover vibration energy otherwise dissipated in viscous dampers. This study compares a passive suspension, a conventional hybrid regenerative suspension, and a harvester-dominant architecture in which the viscous damper is removed. The novelty of the study lies in the systematic comparison of these three architectures under identical modeling, excitation, control, and evaluation conditions rather than in the damper-free concept itself. Several simple electrical load regulation strategies are used as benchmarks, not to optimize controller performance, but to demonstrate the potential of active control to improve the energy–comfort trade-off. The results show that load regulation can increase harvested power while maintaining or, in some cases, improving ride comfort compared with uncontrolled and conventional hybrid configurations commonly reported in the literature. Harvester-dominant architecture provides substantially greater energy-recovery potential, although its performance strongly depends on the control strategy and excitation type. These findings indicate considerable potential for dedicated adaptive control to further increase recovered energy while improving ride comfort.