Non-pressurized magnetorheological damper controlled using fuzzy semi active damping force estimator (fSADE)

Abstract

This paper presents the comparison of vehicle’s ride performance between passive suspension system and nonpressurized magnetorheological damper semi active suspension system controlled by the skyhook algorithm and intelligent damping force estimators using fuzzy logic. The modelling of 7-degrees of freedom (7DOF) of vehicle’s ride model is described. The simulation work of semi active suspension system involves actual dynamic behaviours of a custom-made, non-pressurized magnetorheological damper. Two intelligent controllers were used to estimate the required damping force for vibration isolations, which are fuzzy logic and fuzzy semi active damping force estimator (fSADE). The fuzzy logic algorithm is used to estimate a suitable damping coefficient for the studied semi active suspension system. In fSADE, the damping coeffients are estimated by the fuzzy logic algorithm combined with the semi active damping force estimator (SADE) algorithm, for further improvement of ride comfort. The ride quality is evaluated based on vertical motions (jerk, acceleration and displacement), roll motions (roll rate and roll angle) and pitch motions (pitch rate and pitch angle). The performance of the fSADE algorithm is compared with the skyhook-controlled, fuzzy-controlled systems as well as the passive suspension systems. It is found that the overall ride comfort performance of the proposed controller is better than the fuzzy and passive suspension systems.