Magnetorheological damper control for semi-active suspension system using skyhook-differential evolution

Abstract

Magnetorheological (MR) damper is an effective semi-active vibration actuator which can produce controllable damping force by supplying proper voltage or electrical current as an input. By altering the input, the behaviour of MR fluid will change accordingly from free flow to semi-solid state. A semi-active suspension system consists of MR damper combines the advantages of both passive and active suspensions which is more economical, safe, mechanical simplicity and does not required a large power supply. Therefore, a lot of continuous efforts have been done to develop a vehicle suspension system incorporating with MR damper to reduce the vibration and road disturbance in order to provide a good ride comfort to driver and passenger. This study intends to investigate the performance of quarter car model in terms of body acceleration and body displacement adopted by the Skyhook-Differential Equation controller. Simulation and experimental validation data of MR damper model tests show that the modified Bouc-wen model can be used to represent the MR damper as the model is more accurately predicts the behaviour of the MR damper compared to other parametric models. Skyhook controller utilizing by Differential Evolution (DE) is used in order to optimize the system and its performance is improved with up to 63.04% as compared to the other controller responses.