Adaptive control for trailing arm suspension with hydraulic cylinder spring under practical constraints

TL;DR

This paper develops an adaptive LQ control strategy for a quarter-car suspension system with hydraulic cylinders, enabling smooth arm angle tracking without a heave sensor, and evaluates its performance under various road conditions.

Contribution

It introduces an adaptive control approach that estimates plant parameters online and applies LQ control to improve suspension performance without relying on a heave sensor.

Findings

Controller effectively tracks reference arm angle across different road conditions.

Simulation results show reduced RMS values indicating improved ride comfort.

Adaptive control maintains stability and performance despite parameter variations.

Abstract

This paper presents an adaptive control strategy with LQ control of a quarter-car, which is ameliorated to smoothly follow the dynamically changing reference arm angle, in order to omit the heave sensor in this study. Linearized plant parameters are initially derived from model equation and then estimated by online estimator. LQ control method provides optimal control effort with corresponding estimated plant parameters. The results of the simulation are depicted in time domain. Weighted RMS values of the consequences are suggested to assess the efficiency of the controller. Different road conditions are considered in order to reveal the performance of the controller in detail.