Abstract

All vehicles use suspension system. The suspension system mainly consists of a mechanical spring and a damper. The damper dissipates the mechanical energy into heat and thus damps down the vehicle’s oscillations. In a bid to reduce the vehicle emissions, many technologies are being thought to reduce energy losses and also recover energy from the energy losses if any. In a shock absorber, the mechanical energy is converted into heat, instead of wasting this energy it can be recovered as electricity to charge the onboard batteries. This concept of recovering energy in a shock absorber is known as regenerative shock absorber.Conventional shock absorbers simply absorb the shocks and dissipate this energy as heat whereas regenerative shock absorbers absorb these shocks and generate electricity by using hydraulic piston and cylinder arrangement using a suitable hydraulic fluid. Piston undergoes compression and expansion with movement of vehicle. Compression causes piston to force the hydraulic oil to flow through the tubes and then through the nozzles. The high pressure oil from the nozzles impinges on the turbine blades rotates the turbine to generate electricity.