Hydropneumatic suspension in a truck : Installation of a hydropneumatic suspension for a Scania truck

Abstract: Investigation and testing of hydropneumatic suspension systems has previously been done at Scania between the year 1992 and 2000. Interest has aroused at Scania CV AB to further test a hydropneumatic suspension. The reason being the new ventures of decarbonised, clean, electrified, automatized and digitalised vehicles. If electrified trucks are to be adopted in the market as an alternative to trucks with combustion engines, solutions for this type of vehicle’s capacity need to be presented. The vehicle’s weight needs to be reduced; the effectiveness of the components needs to be increased and alternatives to increase battery storage needs to arise if it’s going match the traveling distance of a combustion engine. The mission of the project is to present an installation solution of a hydropneumatic suspension that retains the performance of the current air suspension. The presented material will contain CAD-models of all the brackets that will be designed to fit the suspension, as well as the placement in the vehicle assembly for said brackets. The results show that as for the front suspension the best solution is a placement of the hydraulic cylinders in front of the vehicles front axle. Furthermore the rear suspension is best suited for a placement of the hydraulic cylinders behind the vehicles rear axle. However it was concluded that the rear suspension will not be able to retain the current stroke of the vehicle without sacrificing its ground clearance. Parts of the suspension could however be terminated when the air suspension system was replaced by the hydropneumatic system namely: The front suspension anti-roll bar, shock absorbers, air springs and their coexisting brackets.