Optimal Hardware and Control Co-Design Applied to an Active Car Suspension Setup

Abstract

For complex systems, it is not easy to obtain optimal designs for the hardware architecture and control configurations. Every design aspect influences the final performance, and often the interactions of the different components cannot be clearly determined in advance. In this work, a novel co-design optimization method was applied that allows the optimal placement and selection of actuators and sensors to be performed simultaneously with the determination of the control architecture and associated controller tuning parameters. This novel co-design method was applied to a state-space model of a downscaled active car suspension laboratory setup. This setup mimics a car driving over a specific road surface while active components in the suspension have to increase the driver’s comfort by counteracting unwanted vibrations. The result of this co-design optimization methodology is a Pareto front that graphically represents the trade-off between the maximum performance and the total implementation cost; the co-design results were validated with measurements of the physical active car suspension setup. The obtained controller tuning parameters are compared herein with existing controller tuning methods to demonstrate that the co-design method is able to determine optimal controller tuning parameters.