Mitsubishi Jidosha Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Hiroki Abe

Tadao Tanaka

Minoru Tatemoto

Mitsuhiko Harara

Naotake Kumagai

Masanaga Suzumura

Sunao Chikamori

Yasutaka Taniguchi

Shinichi Takeuchi

Shozo Takizawa

Takeshi Mitsui

Masahiro Honda

Tetsushi Mimuro

A rear wheel steering hydraulic cylinder is arranged in a rear wheel steering apparatus to steer rear wheels to the right and left. When a front wheel steering angle detected by a front wheel steering angle sensor exceeds a predetermined value, the hydraulic cylinder is actuated to steer the rear wheels in a direction opposite to that of the front wheels. When the rear wheel steering angle detected by a rear wheel steering angle sensor is changed in response to the front wheel steering angle, the hydraulic cylinder is not activated, thereby not steering the rear wheels.

Rear wheel steering apparatus

Wheel suspension units each having fluid spring chambers are arranged in a vehicle suspension apparatus. A roll control quantity determined in accordance with the relationship between a vehicle velocity and a steering angular velocity, i.e., inlet solenoid valves and exhaust solenoid valves, are controlled in accordance with a solenoid ON/OFF time, thereby controlling the roll of a vehicle.

Vehicle suspension apparatus

A vehicle suspension apparatus including suspension units each provided for each wheel and having an air spring chamber is disclosed, in which rolling control and vehicle height control are done through control of air to and from the air spring chambers. The driving of a reservoir tank for storing compressed air to be supplied to the air spring chambers, is inhibited until the engine operation has been stabilized after the start of the engine preset level. In this way, the problems in the engine lubrication and idling are solved, and the defficiencies of the starting property of the engine are overcome.

The characteristic of the suspension is held to be a soft one when the vehicle is running along a flat surface, while it is automatically switched by the switch unit to a hard one when the cycle period T of vertical vibration of the vehicle height becomes near the cycle of the natural vibration of sprung mass of the suspension at the time of running along a road having an irregular surface or jumping a projection, thereby suppressing the resonance of the vehicle body due to external force applied from the road to improve the comfortability.

A suspension apparatus has suspension units which have individual fluid spring chambers and are arranged on the wheels. When a detected negative acceleration (deceleration) exceeds a reference negative deceleration, front wheel fluid supply valves are opened for a control time T to supply a predetermined amount of fluid to the front wheel spring chambers and rear wheel fluid extent valves are opened for the control time T to exhaust a predetermined amount of fluid from the rear wheel fluid spring chambers, thereby decreasing nose dive at the time of deceleration.

A suspension apparatus has suspension units mounted on wheels and each unit has a fluid spring chamber. Fluid is supplied to contracted fluid spring chambers and is exhausted from elongated fluid spring chambers to control the change in position of the vehicle. In the position control mode, a large-diameter path is selected to supply or exhaust a large amount of compressed fluid. In the height control mode, a small-diameter path is selected to supply or exhaust a small amount of compressed fluid. The required amounts of compressed fluid can be supplied to the fluid spring chambers in both the position and height control modes.

Wheel suspension units each having fluid spring chambers are arranged in a vehicle suspension apparatus. A roll control quantity, determined in accordance with the relationship between a vehicle velocity and a steering angle, i.e., inlet solenoid valves and exhaust solenoid valves are controlled in accordance with solenoid ON/OFF time, thereby controlling rolling of the vehicle.

A vehicle suspension apparatus including suspension units each provided for each wheel and having an air spring chamber is disclosed. When steering wheel is quickly returned toward the center position at the time of a slalom running, it is detected from the steering angular velocity and vehicle velocity that the vehicle body has begun to be returned to a neutral state, and communication control valves are opened before the reaching of the center position, i.e., before the steering angle reaches an insensitive range. Rolling control thus can be improved without delay in the restoration of the position of the vehicle body even at the time of a high speed slalom running, at which time the steering wheel is repeatedly operated quickly.

The front wheel exhaust valves and the rear wheel supply valves are opened for a predetermined period of time when rapid acceleration of the vehicle is detected by the accelerator pedal sensor and the gear position sensor, the absolute value of change in vehicle position and its velocity can be properly controlled. Therefore, comfort and steering stability can be improved as compared with vehicles mounting of the conventional apparatus. In addition, since an acceleration state is detected by the gear position sensor as well as the accelerator pedal sensor, rapid acceleration of the vehicle can be accurately detected, thereby preventing unnecessary position control.

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Okazaki, Japan

Hiroki Abe