Title: Control strategy for ride improvement

Authors: Ricardo Prado, Ricardo A. Ramirez-Mendoza, Ruben Morales-Menendez

Addresses: Tecnologico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, Center for Innovation in Design and Technology, 64,849 Monterrey, NL, Mexico. ' Tecnologico de Monterrey, Campus Ciudad de Mexico, School of Engineering, 14,380, DF, Mexico. ' Tecnologico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey, Accreditations and Quality Enhancement, 64,849 Monterrey, NL, Mexico

Abstract: Riding comfort is a key issue when designing suspensions for commercial vehicles. It can be broadly defined as the degree of comfort of passengers during forward travel at cruise speed while exposed to road disturbances. Currently, this problem is addressed by suitable damping calibration, but even well-tuned suspensions perform badly beyond narrow speed ranges and regular road conditions. This paper proposes a novel control strategy for improving riding comfort in commercial vehicles, based on a semi-active system with heuristic properties. A case study is presented to validate the methodology, with overall good results.

Keywords: ride comfort; control strategy; optimisation; suspension design; commercial vehicles; semi-active suspension; vehicle suspension.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVAS.2009.033259

International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, 2009 Vol.7 No.3/4, pp.141 - 171

Published online: 14 May 2010 *

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