Simulation of Preview Controlled Active Suspension for Vehicles

Desiging a vehicle supension that can give very good ride comfort along with crisp handling has been a subject for researchers for the last three decades. Research shows that active suspension can give superior performance over passive and semi-active suspension systems. Preview controlled active suspension can further improve the performance but faces the issue of sensing the road ahead of the vehicle. Previous applications of preview control have used look-ahead sensors mounted on the front bumper to measure terrain beneath. Such sensors are vulnerable, potentially confused by water, snow, or other soft obstacles; and offer a fixed preview time. For convoy vehicle applications, this book proposes using the overall response of the preceding vehicle(s) to generate preview controller information for follower vehicles. A robust observer is used to estimate the states of a quarter car vehicle model, from which road profile is estimated and passed on to the follower vehicle(s) to generate a preview function. The preview-active suspension, implemented in discrete time using a shift register approach to improve simulation time shows improvements in ride quality and road holding property