Modeling and Analysis of Active Full Vehicle Suspension Model Optimized Using the Advanced Fuzzy Logic Controller

Abstract

The suspension system plays a major role in automobiles to improve passenger comfort, passenger safety and road handling. It isolates the body of a vehicle from road disturbances. The full vehicle would be subjected to disturbances from all four wheels or a full suspension model of the vehicle and, thus, a full-suspension model of the vehicle should be added to the idea of an enhanced control preview. The input data for the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is the velocity and acceleration of the front and rear wheels. Controller outputs are considered to be active forces that improve driver comfort, safety and road handling characteristics. The objective of this work is to model and analyse an active full vehicle suspension. The model is optimized using advanced FLC to improve driver comfort, safety and road handling. The mathematical model for the active full vehicle suspension model has been derived. The necessary background for the Simulink fuzzy logic and FLC has been presented. All the simulations are carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK, a high-performance numeric computation and visualization software package. The fuzzy logic-controlled active values have been compared with ordinary passive simulated values for road profiles. The result of the simulation show that the designed advanced FLC has improved ride comfort by effectively reducing the vehicle body displacement. There is also an appreciable reduction in velocity and acceleration with no increase in suspension travel.