Semi-active control on leaf spring suspension based on SMC

The leaf spring suspension is the most common heavy-duty-suspension for on-highway vehicles, primarily due to large carry capacity, better handling stability ability and low cost. The disadvantages of the conventional leaf spring include crude ride performance and a lack of flexibility in suspension design. In this paper the conventional leaf spring suspension was embed a semi-active control. The dynamics model of two DOF active suspension was built and analyzed, and was used in the semi-active leaf spring suspension as a reference model. With virtual prototyping, a full function heavy duty tractor was built and assembled in dynamics simulation software. The semi-active leaf spring suspension was controlled using sliding mode control to follow the vehicle body dynamic performance with active suspension. A bumpy road test was performed to verify the performance of the proposed semi-active leaf spring suspension. The results show that the semi-active leaf spring suspension can improve the ride performance of the heavy tractors.