PI controller for quarter vehicle active suspension system with optimized gains using PSO algorithm

The active suspension is the main technology for vehicles to achieve both ride control and comfort performance. In this paper, a Proportional- Integral (PI) controller is applied on a quarter models to control the active suspension system. Also, the ride quality, travel suspension and handling is improved. The values of PI controller gain are tuned by using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to achieve ride stability and comfort performance of vehicles. In order to design the proposed PI controller, a new cost function has been defined. PSO algorithm has been applied to optimize new cost function. The cost function is considered as a sum of peak response vector and settling time vector of body acceleration. The results demonstrate that the proposed PI controller improves the tradeoff between ride comfort and suspension travel and tire deflection compared to the PI controller tuned using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and passive suspension system.