Mode control of electro-mechanical suspension systems for vehicle height, levelling and ride comfort

This paper proposes a mode control algorithm of electro-mechanical suspension for vehicle height, attitude control and improvement of ride quality. The proposed control algorithm consists of mode selector, upper-level and lower-level controllers, and suspension state estimator. The mode selector determines the present driving mode using vehicle signals, such as longitudinal speed, steering wheel angle, accelerator pedal position, brake pedal position and vertical acceleration of wheels. The upper-level controller determines the desired suspension state using the present driving mode. The lower-level controller derives the desired stroke speed of the actuator in each suspension by linear quadratic control theory. The suspension state estimator has been designed using accessible sensor measurement by discrete-time Kalman filter theory. The control and estimation algorithms have been developed based on a novel reduced-order vehicle model that includes only the vehicle body dynamics. The model enables the observer to completely remove the effect of unknown road disturbance on the estimation error. The performance of the proposed control algorithm has been evaluated via computer simulation study. The simulation results show that the proposed control algorithm is effective at controlling the electro-mechanical suspension systems. The paper also shows that the considered actuator is suited for vehicle height and levelling control, but not for improvement of ride comfort, due to voltage input constraints.