Title: A semi-active control strategy for vibration isolation to improve the ride comfort of vehicles

Authors: Nima Eslaminasab, Farid Golnaraghi

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. ' Mechatronic Systems Engineering, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, British Columbia V3T 0A3, Canada

Abstract: This paper proposes and studies a new hybrid semi-active control strategy based on the conventional Rakheja-Sankar (R-S) semi-active control to provide better ride-handling quality for vehicle suspension systems, as well as industrial vibration isolators. This study combines the effect of dampers asymmetry and conventional control strategies to achieve higher performance. A simple one-degree-of-freedom quarter-car model is adopted to study the proposed system. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this new strategy, the analytical method of averaging and the numerical analysis are deployed. In addition, a one-degree-of-freedom test bed equipped with a semi-active magnetorheological (MR) damper is developed. The analytical, numerical and experimental methods confirm the advantages of the proposed strategy over the passive system and the conventional control strategies. This new semi-active control strategy could be easily adopted to be used with most of the existing semi-active control systems, offering a higher level of performance with minimal changes.

Keywords: semi-active control; vehicle suspension; asymmetric damping; averaging method; vibration isolation; ride comfort; vehicle ride; magnetorheological dampers.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2009.027215

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2009 Vol.7 No.3, pp.282 - 293

Published online: 17 Jul 2009 *

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