Simulation and experimental evaluations on the performance of pneumatically actuated active roll control suspension system for improving vehicle lateral dynamics performance

Abstract

This paper presents the derivation of a full vehicle model which consists of ride, handling and tyre subsystems to study vehicle dynamics behaviour in the lateral direction. The full vehicle model is then validated experimentally using an instrumented experimental vehicle based on steering wheel input from the driver. Three types of vehicle dynamics test were performed for model validation, namely step steer, slalom and double lane change tests. The validation results show that the behaviours of the model are similar to the real vehicle with acceptable error. An Active Roll Control (ARC) suspension system was developed using the validated full vehicle model to reduce unwanted vehicle motions during steering input manoeuvres such as body roll angle, body roll rate, vertical acceleration of the body and body heave. The proposed controller for the ARC system is a combination of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control with roll moment rejection loop. The results of the study show that the proposed control structure signifi cantly improves the dynamics performance of the vehicle during step steer, slalom and double lane change manoeuvres compared with a passive vehicle system. The additional roll moment rejection loop is found to be able to further improve the performance of the PID ARC system. The effectiveness of the ARC system with the proposed control was also proven experimentally using the instrumented experimental vehicle.