A Comparison of Controller Performances on the Ride Comfort of the Active Suspension System

In this paper, four state feedback controllers, namely skyhook, LQR, H
₂
and H
_∞
, are designed for an active suspension system. The designed controllers are tested both via simulations and experiments on the active suspension set using a square bump, a sine bump and two random road profiles. The simulation results and the experimental results are compared for ride comfort, by post filtering the experimental results within the frequency range specified by the standard ISO 2631-1. The ride comfort analysis is done both via comparing the acceleration of the vehicle body and via comparing the jerk of the vehicle body. It has been shown that, skyhook controllers and LQR controllers are more suitable for bumps, regarding the ride comfort, and that they are not very suitable for the random road profiles. And it is also observed based on the experimental results that, H
₂
and H
_∞
controllers are improving random road profiles with low toughness and are as good as the skyhook and LQR controllers for bumps, but that none of the mentioned controllers are improving random road profiles with high toughness, as expected by the simulation results.