Controller Design and Road-Friendly Suspension Optimization: Half Vehicle Model

In this paper, the design of the suspension system for Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGV) is proposed, which deals with two performance criteria simultaneously. A semi-tractor trailer is used in present work and modeled with half vehicle model. Four types of linear, as well as non-linear, passive and semi-active suspension systems, are presented in this work. The control law is proposed for the semi-active suspension system using a PID controller to remove the need for passive damper along with active damper. Two objective optimization is performed using the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II). Road Damage (RD) is taken as the first objective along with Goods Damage (GD) as the second objective. All problems are minimization problems. It is concluded based on Pareto front comparison of different suspension systems that the semi-active suspension system with the proposed control law performs well for HGV.