Sliding Mode Controlled Half Car Suspension System with Magnetorheological Damper

Attenuation of vibrations caused by the road undulance conditions are tedious and very much related to human health and vehicle handling problems. One of the promised approaches to solving these problems in a vehicle suspension system is the use of effective controllers. In this paper, the sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed and used to control the magnetorheological (MR) damper. The performance of the proposed controller is verified by incorporating the controller in a half car vehicle suspension model. In a suspension damper design, Modified Bouc-Wen model is used to characterize the hysteretic behaviour of MR damper parameters. The voltage control algorithm is used to convert the desired force into the varied voltage input to the MR damper. The fail-proof advantage of MR damper is analysed by comparing the results of uncontrolled MR suspension with a passive system. In order to limit the pitch angle and to achieve the improved ride comfort and stability of the vehicle, the vertical displacement of the front and rear body of the half-car model is controlled by the SMC controller. The multi-objective control is achieved by the use of SMC in a half car model with the effective minimisation of root mean square body acceleration, suspension workspace and tire deflection compared with passive and uncontrolled MR suspension system.