Commercial vehicle cabin with active air suspension for improved ride comfort

The damping of a common cabin of a commercial vehicle is realized with hydraulic based dampers integrated inside the air springs of the suspension. For the suspension proposed in this paper, the damping forces are generated by varying the mass of air inside the air spring volume. To achieve a high bandwidth of vibration suppression, the mass flow of compressed air is controlled using fast switching valves. To use the air spring actuator in a superimposed vibration control, a force controller was designed, based on a linearized air spring model. Using four force-controlled air springs in the suspension of a cabin, a superimposed vibration control can be designed, which reduces the cabin accelerations in the lifting, pitching and rolling degree of freedom. In case of large excitations the utilized skyhook damping has to be changed into a groundhook damping, which is done by an automated cross-fade. During road tests the meaningful capability of the hybrid vibration isolation concept is proofed by measurements.