Modelling and force tracking control of hydraulic actuator for an active suspension system

Abstract

This paper presents modelling and force tracking control of a non-linear hydraulic actuator applied in a quarter-car active suspension system. The controller structure of the active suspension system was decomposed into two loops namely outer loop and inner loop controllers. Outer loop controller is used to calculate the optimum target force to reject the effects of road disturbances, while, the inner loop controller is used to keep the actual force close to this desired force. The results of the study show that the inner loop controller is able to track well the target force ranging from sinusoidal to random functions of target force. The performance of outer loop controller also shows significant improvement in terms of body acceleration, body displacement and suspension displacement as compared to the passive suspension system.