The analysis of a semi-active suspension system

Automotive industry is growing rapidly by the involving of multi-fields not only mechanical engineering but also electrical and electronic engineering, material and more. As a key system in vehicles, suspension system and its control has been researched in a long time. A well-controlled suspension system will provide high vehicle handling, good driving pleasure, high comfort for passengers, and good isolation from road noise and vibration. In order to enhance the comfort and handling of light-weight transportation vehicles, the semi-active suspension systems is a considerable issues and had been proposed in a number of papers. The semi-active suspension system requires less space than traditional suspension systems. Therefore, it is suitable for small compact car body known as light vehicles. Moreover, the system complexity and maintenance caused by difficulty of assembly will be reduced This paper focuses on the analysis and control of a semi-active suspension system for light vehicles. Models of a quarter-car suspension with air spring and magneto rheological damper were built. Because components in the system involve nonlinear dynamic characteristics, a self-tuning Fuzzy logic controller was designed to the semi-active suspension system. The simulation results showed that the designed suspension system and its controller had good performance for vibration suppression. The work in this paper was divided into three parts: (1) modeling the semi-active suspension system including air spring and magneto-rheological fluid damper (MRF damper); (2) controller design of a self-tuning Fuzzy logic controller; (3) simulation and data analysis.