The study of a simulation test method for a semi-active vehicle suspension

The hardware-in-the-loop simulation test is a substitute way for evaluating vibration control of a vehicle suspension. Due to a hierarchical modeling method that a whole vehicle suspension can be acted as a combination of some quarter suspensions, the test scheme can not only display the controllability of a quarter vehicle suspension, but also evaluate the damping capacity of a half or whole suspension. In this paper, the semi-active control of a half vehicle suspension is executed by a computer software equipped with some facilities such as a vibration table, a magneto-rheological damper (MRD) and transducers, etc. The real time quadric Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control strategy was adopted in the front quarter suspension. A complex control strategy of the LQG and wheelbase preview control was applied for the rear quarter suspension. The simulation test results verify the validity and practicability of the test method in the paper.