Verification of an automotive active leveler

Abstract

We analyze an active leveler designed for automotive applications. The objective of the system is to maintain the height of the car body to a fixed value, despite changes in loads and driving conditions. The objective of the paper is to propose a verification method for checking that certain design specifications, or system performances are achieved. We are able to compute exact bounds on the maximum suspension deflection for the given model of the system and road disturbance. The motivation for this work comes from the disappointing results of Stanner et al. (1997) where the problem was approached by using HYTECH. The numerical and computational complexity problems reported in the above article have their common roots in the need to fit and approximate the actual model with a linear hybrid model.