Ride Comfort and Wheel Load Fluctuation Compatible Control Using Variable Stiffness and Damping

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Ride Comfort and Wheel Load Fluctuation Compatible Control Using Variable Stiffness and Damping

Liu, Yanqing / Hozumi, Jin / Tabata, Masaaki

A purpose of a vehicle suspension is to isolate the body from road disturbances. Simultaneously, it is to reduce wheel load fluctuations and improve road holing. However, in conventional variable damping control suspensions, it is a difficult issue to improve both the ride comfort and the wheel load fluctuations simultaneously in the whole frequency region. In this paper, a new compatible control algorithm using variable stiffness and variable damping was proposed. The variable stiffness and the variable damping were designed simultaneously using the nonlinear H infinite theory with frequency weighting functions. Twelve different control schemes involving passive, only variable damping, only variable stiffness, and variable stiffness and damping control algorithms were explored. The frequency and time responses of a quarter-car model to sinusoidal sweep and random excitations showed that the system with the proposed control algorithm provided excellent performances in the whole frequency region. Based on the comparisons between the controller designed separately and the controller designed simultaneously, the responses of the system with the proposed control algorithm were similar to those of the system using variable stiffness to reduce the low frequency responses of sprung mass accelerations, and using variable damping to reduce the high frequency responses of wheel load fluctuations.