Robust control synthesis for seat suspension systems with actuator saturation and time-varying input delay

The control synthesis problem is investigated in this paper for a class of semi-active seat suspension systems with norm-bounded parameter uncertainties, time-varying input delay and actuator saturation. A vertical vibration model of human body is introduced in order to make the modeling of seat suspension systems more precise. By employing a delay-range-dependent Lyapunov function and exploring the property of the saturation nonlinearity, the existence conditions of the desired state-feedback controller are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The controller is derived by solving the LMIs and the corresponding closed-loop system is asymptotically stable with a guaranteed H ∞ performance. A design example is presented to show the usefulness and advantages of the developed theoretical results.