Modeling and Control for a Semi-active Suspension with a Magnetorheological Damper Including the Actuator Dynamics

Reported researches on semi-active suspension neglect the actuador dynamics, missing important information that can deteriorate the suspension's performance. The present research proposes a new semi-active suspension model with a magnetorheological damper, including its dynamics. Three control approaches are applied to this suspension model to improve passenger comfort and vehicle stability. The well known control strategies: skyhook, groundhook and hybrid, are adequated for the model and simulated using Matlab. Exhaustive simulation results compare comfort and stability between an average city car passive suspension and the proposed semi-active suspension. The suspension with hybrid control shows the best performance complying, at the same time, with vehicle stability and passenger comfort.