Observer based semi-active suspension control applied to a light commercial vehicle

This paper is on the development of a semi-active suspension control system for a light commercial vehicle and concentrates on the implementation of observer based semi-active suspension controllers for ride comfort improvement. A quarter car suspension model is considered in which the sprung and unsprung mass velocities are calculated from the corresponding acceleration measurements using an observer. These velocities are then used to compute various semi-active control strategies and further applied to the Continuously Varying Dampers (CVD) of a light commercial vehicle. Both simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed observer based controllers.