Vehicle suspensions
First Claim
1. A vehicle suspension system including a lateral accelerometer arranged to produce a lateral acceleration signal, and a control means arranged to receive the lateral acceleration signal, to measure an average value of the signal over time and to determine from the average value a reference value which corresponds to zero lateral acceleration, and to measure an instantaneous value of the signal and compare the instantaneous value with the reference value to measure an instantaneous lateral acceleration, the average value is a weighted average produced using a weighting factor and by integrating over time the instantaneous value of the lateral acceleration signal.
3 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An active vehicle roll control system is disclosed in which a roll bar (22) has two halves (22a, 22b) which can be rotated relative to each other by a control unit (26) in order to actively control vehicle roll. The control unit (26) receives signals from lateral accelerometers (29, 30). In order to determine accurately when the vehicle is experiencing zero lateral acceleration, the control unit (26) averages the signal from each accelerometer (29, 30) continuously and uses the average signal as an indication of the straight ahead position. The averaging algorithm defines a window of low lateral accelerations to be used, and a gain to be applied to the acceleration signals, each of which is speed dependent so that the averaging process is not affected by abnormal vehicle movements.
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Citations
15 Claims
- 1. A vehicle suspension system including a lateral accelerometer arranged to produce a lateral acceleration signal, and a control means arranged to receive the lateral acceleration signal, to measure an average value of the signal over time and to determine from the average value a reference value which corresponds to zero lateral acceleration, and to measure an instantaneous value of the signal and compare the instantaneous value with the reference value to measure an instantaneous lateral acceleration, the average value is a weighted average produced using a weighting factor and by integrating over time the instantaneous value of the lateral acceleration signal.
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9. A vehicle suspension system including a lateral accelerometer arranged to produce a lateral acceleration signal, and a control means arranged to receive the lateral acceleration signal, to measure an average value of the signal over time and to determine from the average value a reference value which corresponds to zero lateral acceleration, and to measure an instantaneous value of the signal and compare the instantaneous value with the reference value to measure an instantaneous lateral acceleration;
- and wherein
the average value is produced by integrating over time the instantaneous value of the lateral acceleration signal and the average value is a weighted average produced using a weighting factor which is arranged to bias the average value towards the value of signals produced when the lateral acceleration is low. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
- and wherein
Specification