Experimental Study of Damping and Energy Regeneration Characteristics of a Hydraulic Electromagnetic Shock Absorber

This paper presents a new kind of shock absorber, hydraulic electromagnetic shock absorber (HESA), which can not only isolate vibration but also recover energy from vibration of vehicles. The energy recovery scheme is put forward, and the HESA prototype as well as the bench is trial manufactured. The damping characteristic of the HESA prototype is tested, and its performance is good under low cracking pressure and small excitation amplitude without taking the requirement that damping force in compression stroke is greater than that in extension stroke into account. The energy-regenerative characteristic of the HESA prototype is investigated, and it can recover energy about 200 watts in 10Hz-3mm excitation. However, the energy recovery efficiency is only 16.6%, and the rectifying efficiency of the hydraulic rectifier decreases with the excitation frequency increase, which eventually leads to a reduction in energy recovery efficiency. The linear loss of oil is analyzed theoretically, and the wasted power of pipeline is found to account for 1/3 of the total power. It can be seen from the mathematical model of linear loss that this energy loss can be decreased effectively by increasing the inner diameter of pipeline.