A Novel Application of Magnetorheological Seat Suspension with an Improved Tuning Control Strategy

During the operation of commercial vehicles, drivers are usually exposed to long-term vibrations and acquire several health problems. Moreover, the end-stop impacts caused by large-magnitude vibrations or shocks may affect driving performance and result in injuries. A study of magnetorheological (MR) seat suspension controlled by a novel tuning control strategy is conducted in this research to reduce vibrations and avoid end-stop impacts. First, the MR damper’s characteristics are tested, and a mathematical model of MR seat suspension is established. Then, an improved tuning control strategy is designed based on this model. The proposed strategy has three control stages that can be adjusted according to the suspension stroke to improve seat comfort or avoid end-stop impacts. Each part of the control strategy is designed separately, and the vibration attenuation performance of this seat suspension is evaluated with a simulation for three excitations, i.e., harmonic excitation, bump excitation, and random road excitation. Finally, an experiment is conducted to verify the conclusion of the simulation. The seat suspension with the proposed control shows good performances on vibration attenuation and end-stop impact reduction. Compared with a passive seat, the vibration level is reduced by around 27% and end-stop impact is avoided when semiactive suspension with the proposed strategy is used. It also shows the best overall performance among the three experimental algorithms. Both the simulation and the experiment results indicate that the vibration attenuation performance of the seat suspension can be greatly improved with the improved tuning control strategy.