Black-box identification of a continuously variable semi-active damper

This paper proposes a procedure to identify a nonlinear black-box simulation model of a continuously variable, semi-active damper for a passenger car. A neural network based output-error model structure is used to describe the complex, highly nonlinear dynamic behaviour of the electro-hydraulic damper. The used identification procedure automatically selects the regression variables by means of a state of the art technique for the model structure selection. Experimental validation of the proposed method shows that the obtained models are able to accurately simulate the dynamic damper behaviour.