Title: Active air-suspension design for transit buses

Authors: Jie Xiao, Bohdan T. Kulakowski, Ming Cao

Addresses: United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT 06108, USA. ' Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA. ' United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT 06108, USA

Abstract: The goal of this study is to design a robust active suspension that is capable of handling the combination of suspension non-linearities, uncertainty in the vehicle model parameters, and preload-dependent variation in the suspension characteristics. Since the loading condition of transit buses often varies from trip to trip, the robustness of the active suspension system with respect to the model parameter uncertainty becomes especially important. The effort of this study consists of two parts: one is to develop a non-linear air-spring model based on experimental data; and the other is to design a sliding mode controller to improve suspension system performance, more specifically, ride quality.

Keywords: vehicle dynamics; active suspension systems; air springs; sliding mode control; transit buses; heavy vehicles; robust suspension design; vehicle suspension; ride quality.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2007.015710

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2007 Vol.14 No.4, pp.421 - 440

Published online: 09 Nov 2007 *

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