Compare Designs

Modeling and simulation can be used to predict the effects of replacing one component in a system with another. In this model, an active damper is considered as a replacement for a simple passive damper in the driver's seat of a heavy truck.

Simulate the response of both damper designs to a chirp signal. Such a signal shows the seat movement in response to a range of frequencies in the road movement.

Plot the seat movement at different frequencies of road disturbance for each damper design. The active damper clearly has less movement for all frequencies.

After extracting the raw data for the seat movement, an amplitude response curve can be estimated by looking at the envelope of the oscillatory response.

The response curves for the two designs show less seat movement over all frequencies for the active damper.