Improving Ride-Comfort of a Quarter-Car Model using Modal Control

In this paper, modal control was used to control the active suspension of a quarter-car model. Modal control can be designed to alter the dynamics of any mode of a system without disturbing the remaining modes. Therefore, in this study, modal control was used to alter the complex eigenvalue of the body-bounce mode of a quarter-car suspension model and thereby by optimizing a measure of the frequency response functions from road disturbance to sprung and unsprung mass displacements, the ride-comfort of a vehicle was improved. It has been shown that modal control can be used in a direct manner to change the dynamics of a vehicle suspension i.e. soft suspension, stiff suspension depending on the driver attitude that affects the vehicle stability and road conditions i.e. urban driving, off-road driving.