Multi-objective H∞ control of a laboratory model of active suspension system

This work deals with the H_∞ control of a laboratory model of active suspension system. The design goal is to achieve a trade-off between the acceleration of the vehicle chassis, related to the comfort of the passengers, and control effort when the system is subjected to the disturbance associated with the road profile. Four control configurations are investigated: state-feedback, static output feedback, Proportional-Integral-Derivative control, and a combination of state feedback and static output feedback. The control objectives are formulated in terms of the H_∞ norm of closed-loop transfer functions. A differential evolution algorithm is applied to solve the multi-objective optimization problem in the space of control parameters instead of already available functions for H_∞ control synthesis due to a specific characteristic of the system model. The controllers are implemented in the laboratory model to investigate the efficiency of the proposed synthesis procedure and to compare the different control strategies.