Attitude control of full vehicle using variable stiffness suspension control

Abstract

In this paper, the attitude of a ground vehicle travelling in cornering is controlled using a variable stiffness semi-active suspension control. The main goal of the variable stiffness semi-active suspension controller is to track as close as possible the performance of the full-active suspension control. The work is subdivided into two main parts. At first, making use of optimal control theory, the full-active suspension control of the full car is designed in various ways, depending on the choices of the state's variables. Afterwards, the variable stiffness control algorithm is derived based on the variable damping semi-active control concept, except that the variable damping is now replaced by the variable stiffness mechanism. Simulation results using various types of manoeuvre show that, when external body forces are applied to the vehicle, the variable stiffness control tracks the performance of the full-active control for high damping and stiffness coefficient, and for mild damping and stiffness coefficient, the performance of the variable stiffness control follows that of the skyhook controller. Copyright (C) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.