Title: Active vibration control of agriculture tractor suspension using optimised feedback controller

Authors: H. Metered; A. Elsawaf

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Cairo, 11718, Egypt ' Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Cairo, 11718, Egypt

Abstract: The paper investigates the use of a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm to search for optimal feedback controller gains for the active agriculture tractor suspension system, for the first time, to reduce the transmitted vibrations to the tractor body caused by road irregularities. The proposed PSO algorithm aims to minimise the dynamic tyre load (DTL) generated by tractor-terrain interaction as the objective function with constraint of the actuator force. Suspension performance is assessed in time and frequency domains to prove the success of the proposed controller gains tuned using the PSO technique under different operating conditions. The simulation results reveal that the feedback controller gains tuned by the proposed PSO algorithm offer a significant improvement of the suspension performance, compared with both the conventional passive and the classical feedback gains tuned by the trial and error (TAE) technique.

Keywords: agriculture tractor; particle swarm optimisation; PSO; active suspension controller; ride comfort; tractor stability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2019.102684

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2019 Vol.26 No.6, pp.790 - 804

Received: 11 Nov 2016
Accepted: 25 Apr 2017
Published online: 02 Oct 2019 *

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