Active following fuzzy output feedback sliding mode control of real-vehicle semi-active suspensions

Many semi-active suspension systems have been investigated in various literatures in order to achieve lower energy consumption and as good performance as full-active suspension systems. Full-active suspension systems can achieve a good ride quality by actuators; however, their implementation equipments are expensive. The full-active suspensions are perfect from the point of view of control; hence, semi-active control laws with performance similar to full-active controls have attracted the engineering community for their ease and lower cost of implementation. This paper presents a new active following fuzzy output feedback sliding mode control for a real-vehicle semi-active suspension system. The performance of the proposed controller has been verified by comparing it with passive control and also with the full-active target semi-active approximation control method. In the experiment, it was shown that the proposed method has the effectiveness in stabilizing heave, roll and pitch movement of the car body.