Road adaptive semi-active suspension and cruise control through LPV technique

Multiple semi-active suspension control systems have been studied and adapted to vehicles in the past. Many of these systems work with actual road conditions, while oncoming road conditions are not considered. This paper presents a method to integrate look-ahead road information in the adaptive semi-active suspension control with energy-efficient cruise control. Oncoming road conditions and categories are known by using a global positioning system and historic road information. The control configuration has been designed with the Linear Parameter Varying framework. The behavior of the controller can be modified by the use of a dedicated scheduling variable, which is defined by considering a look-ahead estimation algorithm based on prehistoric simulations of passive suspension. The operation of the integrated adaptive semi-active suspension system is demonstrated through real-time simulation in the TruckSim environment with real geographical data. In order to prove the effectiveness of the proposed method two different simulations have been evaluated and compared: one with conventional semi-active suspension and another with an adaptive semi-active suspension. The simulation results show that the overall performance in road holding, suspension deflection and ride comfort has been improved, which effectively demonstrates the advantage of presented adaptive semi-active suspension control based on look-ahead information.