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Vehicle ride comfort and handling demands conflicting design requirements from a vehicle suspension system. As a result, a passive vehicle suspension is incapable of providing the optimum performance for both ride and stability. A test set up is presented in this paper to enable a developer to test any given control algorithm on real-time hardware for an active vehicle suspension, and simulate quarter car performance characteristics. A quarter car model is developed in a host computer and then embedded in a target computer. The parameters of the quarter car are accessible for modification in host computer through TCP/IP connection with target computer. Ride and stability performance characteristics are calculated and also made available during HIL simulation. A controller including a DSP card works with a third computer, where the control system architecture can be edited and control parameters can be changed using a customizable graphical user interface.

It is becoming a greater challenge to win a race as more and more technologies are put into use to enhance vehicle-handling characteristics. Vehicle handling during cornering and braking is one of the crucial performance characteristics that is continuously improved upon. To help the driver achieve the best handling performance on the track, suspensions are tuned to optimize for the specific track and racing conditions. Typically 4-post test rigs are used to test for the heave, pitch, roll and torsional frequencies of the suspensions. However three more actuators (aeroload actuators) become necessary to tune the suspensions at the correct ride height by including the aerodynamic effects. By means of a 7-post testing system an optimization procedure is executed to improve handling performance. An instrumented vehicle is driven on the track. The response of the vehicle is then replicated on a 7-post system using Iterative Control System (ICS) software.