Disturbance rejection and feedback control algorithm for active suspension plant

Suspension system in a vehicle is used for passenger comfort, road handling and ride control, and is essentially a spring-damper system. An Active Suspension system employs an external force, in addition to the damper force, calculated using a control algorithm. In this paper, a study has been done to implement a PID based controller by disturbance rejection and vibration isolation principle. This was further extended to a state feedback controller with modified cost functions that are optimized catering to various performance criteria. A study has been done on how those different cost functions reflect on the performance measurements and how this can be extended to deliver any required output. The limits imposed on calculating the necessary state feedback matrix was decided by the hardware constraints available to us. Finally, the design was tested in real time, using hardware and it was observed that our design was able to control the system in the desired way.