Toward systematic approaches to design and implement vehicles semi-active control systems

In this paper a systematic while practical methodology has been presented for design of vehiclepsilas semiactive suspension systems. The semi-active control strategies developed to improve vehicle ride comfort and stability generally have a switching nature. This makes the design of the controlled suspension systems difficult and highly dependent on an extensive trial and error process. The proposed methodology maps the discontinuous control system model to a continuous linear region where all the time/frequency design techniques established in the conventional control system theory can be applied. If the semiactive control system is designed to satisfy some ride/stability requirements, an inverse mapping offers control law. The effectiveness of the proposed design methodology in dealing with real industrial problems is demonstrated with experimental results.