F2008-SC-027

DEVELOPMENT OF A DISPLACEMENT SENSOR FOR INTELLIGENT SUSPENSION

1 1

Lee, DongHun*, 2Cho, BongGun, 2Lee, DongRak, 1Boo, KwangSuck Graduate School of Mechanical Engineering, INJE University, Korea 2S&T Daewoo, Korea

KEYWORDS GMR, Displacement Sensor, Magnetic field ABSTRACT - This paper describes development of a new displacement sensor for intelligent suspension system in which the damping force has been controlled by MR fluid. Most of the current vehicle height sensors have been installed at external place of the damper and connected to that by mechanical linkages so far. The developed sensor has a new mechanism which detects movement of the sensor rod same as connecting rod in the suspension damper by using a GMR Sensor and convert it to the relative displacement from an initial position. INTRODUCTION Almost most of motor companies use displacement sensor for measuring vehicle height as shown in figure 1. Figure 1 (a) show the height sensor mechanism in vehicle and the vehicle height can be measured by a rotary sensor as shown in Figure 1 (b). The linking mechanism show in Figure 1(a) converts height position of vehicle into a rotary angle. This kind of vehicle height mechanism does not only increase the complexity, but also the difference between measuring and damping force acting positions. Thus we propose a new concept sensor which is directly equipped in a damper, no more external linkage mechanism is required. The proposed sensor can be integrated in the rod guide of the damper as shown in Figure 2, detect relative displacement due to rod motion.

(a) (b) Figure 1: The height sensor in vehicle (a) and Non-contact rotary sensor (b)

Figure 2: Configuaration of the intergrated sensor

DISPLACEMENT SENSOR FOR A DAMPER A relative displacement sensor is composed of three parts; a rod with a regular grooves, a GMR sensor, and a permanent magnet. Figure 3 shows configuration of the relative displacement sensor and describes the measuring principle. The GMR sensor measures variation of magnetic flux induced from the rod which has different depth due to the grooved and ungrooved surfaces. The displacement of rod relation to the rod guide as a basis can be calculated by counting the phase of the flux variation and the magnitude of the flux. The Giant Magneto-Resistive(GMR) effect It was discovered in 1988 (1). The free electrons are generated at spin-up and spin-down in equal proportions. When the orientation of both magnetic layers is the same, only one type of electron is retarded to low-resistance state as shown in Figure 4 (a). When the magnetic orientations of the layers are opposed, both spin-up and spin-down electrons suffer retardation of high-resistance state as shown in Figure 4 (b).

Figure 3 : Configuration of a relaitive displacement sensor

(a) (b) Figure 4 : Low- resistance state (a) and High-resistance state (b)

Signal Processing The GMR sensor has four resistances in a cell which has a wheatsone bridge circuit by connecting a pair of GMRs and shield resisters as shown in Figure 5. The two GMR resistances are exposed in outside of the sensor cell and varies with magnetic flux induced

from the relative position between both. The wheastone bridge circuit converts the variation of the GMR into output voltage difference.

(a)

(b)

Figure 5 : Whestonebridge(a) and typical gradiometer transfer function(b)

The voltage difference of the circuit is too small, thus it should be amplifed to some volt level by simple op-amp connection as shown in Figure 6. Vout can be calculated using equation(1) under assumption of the condition (2). The circuits can be also designed to be operated in low power and 5V condition.
R4 R2 R3 + R4 Vout = (Vout + ) (Vout ) + Vref (1) R1 + R2 R3 R3

R1 + R2 = R3 + R4 >> 5 K

(2)

VREF

R4

Vout1 Vout2

R3

Vcc
Single Supply Op-Amp

Vout

R1

GMR Sensor
R2

Figure 6 : Single op amp bridge amplifier

The voltage outputs has sinusoidal waveforms. It could be converted to high and low digital signals by thresholding. We can estimate direction of the rod movement according to phase lead and lag between out1 and out2 signals.

Figure 7 : GMR sensor output Signal

Figure 7 shows the GMR sensor output and digitized signals. The digital logic circuit made with a CPLD receives GMR sensor outputs and calculates rod movement's direction and the speed. All operations are controlled at magnificently rapid rate under the 30 nsec. Figure 8 (a) shows a designed digital signal processing circuit and Fig. 8 (b) signal processing time table.

(a) Circuit for signal processing (b) Time Table Figure 8 : A digital signal processing circuit and the time table for the processing

Sensor Structure Figure 9 shows configuration of the relative displacement sensor which has a pair of PCB, as GMR sensor and signal processing boards, a permanent magnet, a housing case and a cable. Because the GMR sensor has to be placed on the rod groove, the sensor board has been assembled with the signal processing board perpendicularly. The sensor module has to be

manufactured with compact size because of installing in the rod guide as mentioned before. The housing has been also made by EMC compound materials for EMC stability.

Base PCB Magnet

Sensor Housing Processing Chip Resister

Cable

GMR Sensor

Sensor PCB

Figure 9 : Layout of the developed sensor

EXPERIMENTS FOR EVALUATING SENSOR PERFORMANCE A series of experiments has been conducted to evaluate performances of the developed sensor including a resolution, repeatability, and a response time. The performance test experiments have been accomplished with MTS 849 S/A testing system. Figure 10 shows comparison between a reference and the developed sensor outputs. When the reference command has 10 Hz and the sensor output has good correlation with the reference. Figure 10 (b) to (e) shows magnified view of the signals to evaluate the accuracy of the sensor The figures show that the accuracy is very good to be acceptable as a sensor for measuring vehicle height in the active damper and the only one step delay can be detected due to digital signal processing. Figure 11 (a) shows hysteresis graph of the sensor. Figure 11 (b) to (d) shows magnified view of the signals to evaluate hysteresis of the sensor. As a result, Figure 11 (d) shows maximum error of hysteresis is 0.6mm at 3.14m/s. A response time is less than 1ms in Figure 10.

(a)

(b) Part A
Ref. Signal Sensor output

(c) Part B
Ref. Signal Sensor output

(d) Part C (e) Part D Figure 10 : Comparison between the reference and the sensor output

(a)

(b) Part B

(c) Part A

(d) Part C Figure 11 : Hysteresis graph of the sensor.

CONCLUSION A review of proposed displacement sensor for a intelligent suspension has been presented. The proposed displacement sensor doesn't requires a external linkage mechanism. It can be integrated in the rod guide of the damper, detect relative displacement due to rod motion. Above all, the developed GMR linear displacement sensors show that the sensor performance is satisfied as vehicle height sensor for the active damper with the displacement accuracy under 0.5%, the resolution of 0.1mm, and the response time less than 1msec. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research was supported by the Regional Industrial Technology Development Program which has conducted by the Ministry of Commerce Industry and Energy(MOCIE) of the Korean Government. REFERENCES (1) Hiroyuki Wakiwaka, Directional sensitivity of GMR element and its industrial applications, International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, pp 89-96, 2001/2002. (2) S.S.P. Parkin, N. More and K.P. Roche, Oscillations in Exchange Coupling and Magnetoresistance in of Metallic superlattice Structures Co/Ru, Co/Cr and Fe/Cr, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 2304, 1990. (3) D.E. Heim, R.E. Fontana, C. Tsang and V.S. Speriosu, Design and Operation of Spin-Valve Sensors IEEE Trans. on Magn. 30, 316, 1994 (4) H.Wakiwaka, L.Shiotani, Y. Kataoka and Y. Kikuchi, Comparison of three magnetic sensors for a magnetic encoder, Non-linear electromagnetic systems, IOP Press, pp.625-628, 2000. (5) John C. Mallinson, Magneto-resistive heads fundamentals and applications, Academic Press, pp94-97, 1996