Improving ride comfort of semi-active suspension with magnetorheological damper by fuzzy-PID control

Abstract

Semi-active suspension using magnetorheological (MR) damper has become one of the popular choices for improving vehicle ride comfort due to its adjustable damping, affordable cost, and quick response. MR damper has highly nonlinear and obvious hysteresis behavior, so its control becomes complicated. Fuzzy control combined with proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is used to study the vibration reduction control strategy of semi-active suspension with MR damper. PID is highly robust, but the control parameters cannot be changed during the control process. Therefore, it has good adjustment ability for specific situations, but cannot effectively adjust nonlinear systems. Fuzzy control performs fuzzy inference based on input variables and fuzzy rules constructed from expert knowledge, and continuously outputs effective control parameters to adjust nonlinear systems. The advantages of both are used to construct fuzzy-PID controller to control MR damper. A quarter-car semi-active suspension with MR damper model is established using MATLAB/Simulink for simulation analysis. Compared with passive and PID, fuzzy-PID reduces the root mean square (RMS) values of body acceleration, suspension travel, and tire deflection, reduces body vibration, and improves ride comfort.