B.E.

Project

MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL FOR ELECTRO-HYDRAULIC

ACTUATED ACTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEM

Guides: Prof. Dr. Sachin Maheshwari,

Asst. Prof. Dr Vineet Kumar Siddharth Singh 677MP14
Vaibhav Sharma 683MP14
Vidya Shankar 685MP14
Objective
Control of active suspension systems using model predictive control and adaptive predictive
control techniques for a quarter car model of 2-DOF considering electro-hydraulic actuator
dynamics. This projects aims to arrive at a more accurate solution by considering the non-
linear behaviors of the spring, electro-hydraulic actuator, tyre and the valve. Hard constraints
of a suspension system such as suspension travel, dynamic tire load and actuator saturation
are maintained at a desired level in the presence of uncertain sprung mass.
The gains of the controller will be optimized for the study using MPC techniques contrary to
earlier reported work which used unoptimized random gain values. The model will also include
actuator dynamics which weren’t included the earlier reported works.
Suspension: It is the system of tires, tire air, springs, shock absorbers and linkages that
connects a vehicle to its wheels and allows relative motion between the two.
Active suspension is a type of automotive suspension that controls the vertical movement of
the wheels relative to the chassis, rather than in passive suspension where the movement is
being determined entirely by the road surface.

Quarter car active suspension system

Model predictive control (MPC): The controllers rely on dynamic models of the process,
most often linear empirical models obtained by system identification. The main advantage of
MPC is the fact that it allows the current timeslot to be optimized, while keeping future
timeslots in account. This is achieved by optimizing a finite time-horizon, but only
implementing the current timeslot and then optimizing again. Also MPC has the ability to
anticipate future events and can take control actions accordingly. PID controllers do not have
this predictive ability.

A discrete MPC scheme

Literature Survey
The fundamental problems in control of active suspension are the presence of spring,
tyre non-linearity and the sprung mass uncertainty. Earlier attempts for control of
active suspension systems have ignored these problems partially or completely.
For realizing active suspensions, appropriate actuators that can fit into the suspension
packaging space and satisfy the practical power and bandwidth requirements has to be
chosen, as well as measurement devices for feedback control also has to be
determined.
On the first issue, it is noted that electro-hydraulic actuators have been regarded as one
of the most viable choices for an active suspension due to their high power-to-weight
ratio and low cost.
PID-like controllers are not capable of giving satisfactory performance in the actuator
force tracking problem, and more sophisticated control schemes should be employed.
In addition, to overcome the difficulty in achieving a desired force for an electro-
hydraulic active suspension, the force tracking problem is transformed to a
displacement tracking problem. Recently, the adaptive sliding control algorithm based
on the function approximation technique was presented for electro-hydraulic active
suspensions. However chattering phenomenon is inevitable in the sliding mode control,
and it may excite high frequency dynamics which aren’t being modelled. This degrades
the performance of the system and may even lead to instability. Due to the highly
nonlinear dynamics of electro-hydraulic actuators, the tracking of desired forces is
fundamentally limited in its ability when interacting with an environment possessing
dynamics.
Therefore, developing a controller design approach that directly aims on improving
performance of electro-hydraulic active suspensions is becoming necessary. In practice,
not all the state variable’s measurements are available for control of vehicle
suspensions. On the issue of choosing available measurements for feedback control of
vehicle suspensions, static output feedback control strategy would be the best choice
because it is simple in controller structure compared with dynamic output feedback
controller and observer-based state feedback controller and it is able to use the easily
measurable variables, such as suspension deflection and sprung mass velocity, as
feedback signals to realize the active vehicle suspensions.
Methodology
Work done so far
• The literature survey for mathematical model and recent developments regarding the
problem has been completed.
• The Simulink model of a passive suspension system has been completed and simulated for
road. The behavior of the model has been found to be satisfactory.
• The Simulink model of the hydroelectric actuator has been completed.
• The team is working on optimizing a PID controller using GA to verify the behavior of active
suspension model.
• Further incorporating Tyre dynamics and ABS (antilock braking system).
Loop structure of the system
Simulink plant model
Simulation result
Expected Outcome
On successful completion, the project will yield a design of the controller algorithm which is
expected to have a more robust and accurate solution compared to previous solutions, which
yield in a better control of active suspension system. This control strategy could also be used
for other systems with non-linarites.