Application of Optimization Methods to Controller Design for Active Suspensions^#

^#Communicated by S. Velinsky.

Abstract

By offering good ride safety and ride comfort to passenger cars, active suspensions have attracted more and more attention of investigators. Numerous approaches of designing controllers for active suspension systems have been introduced mostly restricted to linear time-invariant systems. In this paper, an approach is proposed where an extended linear-quadratic regulator (LQR) control for linear systems with measurable disturbances is combined with a multi-criterion optimization (MCO) procedure. This allows to directly taking into account criteria with physical interpretation, to guide decision-making in case of contradicting criteria, and to reduce the number of design variables of the MCO problem significantly. The approach is efficient enough to extend it to gain-scheduling control of a linear-parameter-varying spatial car model resulting from changing speed and track curvature. The effectiveness of the designed controller with respect to ride safety and ride comfort is demonstrated through the simulation of a double-lane-change maneuver, where the path itself is found by an optimization procedure.

Keywords:

• Active suspension
• Gain-scheduling control
• Multi-criterion optimization
• Path optimization

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The investigations have been carried out during a research stay of the first author at the Brandenburg University of Technology funded by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam.

Notes

^#Communicated by S. Velinsky.