Research on Ride Comfort and Driving Safety under Hybrid Damping Extension Control for Suspension Systems

This paper is concerned with the conflicting performances of ride comfort and driving safety for semi-active suspension systems. To alleviate this conflict, a novel hybrid damping extension control (HDEC) method is proposed. This method adopts various control methods and the weights of each method are determined by extension theory. Firstly, body acceleration and tire dynamic transformation are selected to evaluate ride comfort and driving safety performance for the semi-active suspension system and their frequency responses of passive suspension, sky-hook control, ground hook control, and S-GH (sky-ground hook) control are analyzed based on a two degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) model. Secondly, extension theory is introduced and the extension control system, which contains three modes and corresponding control algorithms, is established. In addition, the low-frequency excitation and high-frequency excitation simulations are designed to determine the parameters of the extension control system. Finally, ve-DYNA vehicle suspension model simulation is applied to prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the extension control. The simulation results show that, based on the suspension state, extension control can improve the performance of ride comfort and driving safety.