A New Fuzzy Control Strategy for Active Suspensions Applied to a Half Car Model

In this paper, we propose a new control strategy for the active control of a hydraulically controlled half-car active suspension system. Our study propose a special construction of the suspension system where the hydraulic actuator is to be placed in series with the conventional passive one to form a special case of low-frequency active suspension. The full dynamics of the electro-hydraulic servo-valve and hydraulic actuator were employed. Response of proposed control strategy has been tested for different road profiles and riding conditions including car chassis rolling effect when cornering and pitch movements when braking/acceleration. Results have shown superior performance of our modified controller over passive suspensions and many other controllers of previous studies. Simulations show that our proposed controller provide better passenger comfort as it lowers maximum body acceleration by 67% and with reduction in body travel by 89% of that of passive one. Also, our proposed control strategy has shown better road handling and car stability over a whole range of road and inertial disturbances.