Adaptive robust gain scheduled control of vehicle semi-active suspension for improved ride comfort and road handling

An adaptive robust controller is presented and applied on a vehicle semi-active suspension system. Due to the variation of the chassis mass, a robust controller was designed, such that two linear H-infinity controllers are used for both the minimum and maximum limits of the mass variation. The outputs of the two controllers are interpolated to obtain a desired control force signal that corresponds to the variation of the estimated chassis mass. To apply the control algorithm, one acceleration sensor is used. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with the Skyhook, SH-ADD, and Groundhook algorithms. The simulation and experimental results have shown a higher performance regarding ride comfort and road handling.