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The optimization of vehicle suspension kinematic/compliance characteristics is of significant importance in the chassis development. Practical suspension system contains many uncertainties which may result from poorly known or variable parameters or from uncertain inputs. However, in most suspension optimization processes these uncertainties are not accounted for. This study explores the use of Chebyshev polynomials to model complex nonlinear suspension systems with interval uncertainties. In the suspension model, several kinematic and compliance characteristics are considered as objectives to be optimized. Suspension bushing characteristics are considered as design variables as well as uncertain parameters. A high-order response surface model using the zeros of Chebyshev polynomials as sampling points is established to approximate the suspension kinematic/compliance model.

Practical vehicle contains many uncertainties which may result from poorly known or variable parameters or from uncertain inputs. These uncertainties can be presented by fuzzy parameters, random parameters or interval parameters. A new uncertain analysis method is applied to the case in which the vehicle system contains both random parameters and interval parameters. This new uncertain method is a systematic integration of the Polynomial Chaos (PC) theory which accounts for random uncertainty and Chebyshev inclusion function theory which accounts for interval uncertainty. A multi-body vehicle model with both random parameters and interval parameters is used as a numerical model and vehicle handling is investigated in details. The Monte Carlo method combined with the scanning method is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for vehicle handling.