Optimal Design and Analysis of Separable Suspension System of Wheel-Legged Compound Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Wheel-legged compound unmanned ground vehicles promise versatile, fast and efficient mobile capabilities. To improve the driving stability of the wheel-legged compound unmanned ground vehicle and ensure the reliability and practicality of the on-board equipment, a new type of suspension system is designed. The suspension system can be separated and combined between the legged state and the wheeled state. The general scheme of wheel-legged compound unmanned ground vehicle is introduced, and the basic principle of the separable suspension system is clarified. To design and select the parameters of the suspension system, the dynamics model of an equivalent two-degree-of-freedom quarter suspension is established by using Newton Euler method. On this basis, the suspension deflection, body acceleration and tire deflection are used as indices to optimize its stiffness, damping and initial friction torque. Finally, by analyzing the vehicle at 40 km/h on the class B road surface, the time-domain response of the three indices verifies the rationality of vehicle design optimization and aims to provide a theoretical and simulation basis for the optimal design and selection of the separable suspension system of a wheel-legged compound unmanned ground vehicle. The results show that the tire deflection peak 23 mm is smaller than the suspension deflection peak 40 mm, and the body acceleration is less than 1 g, so the suspension parameters design optimization results are reasonable and meet the vehicle reliability and stability requirements.