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A detailed experimental study to quantitatively compare a roll-plane hydraulically interconnected suspension with anti-roll bar in articulation (warp) mode is presented in this paper. Anti-roll bar as part of conventional vehicle suspension system is a standard configuration widely used in road vehicles to provide the essential roll-stiffness to enhance vehicle handling and safety during fast cornering. However the drawback of anti-roll bar is apparent that they limit the wheels' travel on uneven road surface and weaken the wheel/ground holding ability, particularly in articulation mode. Roll-plane Hydraulically Interconnected Suspension (HIS) system, as a potential replacement of anti-roll bar, could effectively increase vehicle roll-stiffness and provide the tunable damping effect, without compromising vehicle's flexibility in articulation mode.

This paper employs the motion-mode energy method (MEM) to investigate the effects of a roll-plane hydraulically interconnected suspension (HIS) system on vehicle body-wheel motion-mode energy distribution. A roll-plane HIS system can directly provide stiffness and damping to vehicle roll motion-mode, in addition to spring and shock absorbers in each wheel station. A four degree-of-freedom (DOF) roll-plane half-car model is employed for this study, which contains four body-wheel motion-modes, including body bounce mode, body roll mode, wheel bounce mode and wheel roll mode. For a half-car model, its dynamic energy contained in the relative motions between its body and wheels is a sum of the energy of these four motion-modes. Numerical examples and full-car experiments are used to illustrate the concept of the effects of HIS on motion-mode energy distribution.