THE LOCATION OF THE CENTRE OF GRAVITY OF A TRAILER AND THE EFFECT OF THE OPTIMIZATION OF THE SUSPENSION PARAMETERS ON VEHICLE VIBRATIONS

Abstract

Our investigations show that in case of our vehicle combination, the optimal location of the centre of gravity of the trailer is the point above the axle of the trailer. Studying the com- plicated swinging couplings of various vehicle combinations requires determining the elements [μij] of the reduced mass proportion matrices. The optimization of the vehicle combination shows also that optimizing individually the passenger car and the trailer leads to a considerable improvement of the swinging charac- teristics of the optimized component. The couplings depend on the mass proportion factors μij of the system and can be neglected if the μij values are small.