Vibration Control of Semi-Active Vehicle Suspension System Incorporating MR Damper Using Fuzzy Self-Tuning PID Approach

In this paper, a nonlinear semi-active vehicle suspension system using MR fluid dampers is investigated to enhance ride comfort and vehicle stability. Fuzzy logic and fuzzy self-tuning PID control techniques are applied as system controllers to compute desired front and rear damping forces in conjunction with a Signum function method damper controller to assess force track-ability of system controllers. The suggested fuzzy self-tuning PID operates fuzzy system as a PID gains tuner to mitigate the vehicle vibration levels and achieve excellent performance related to ride comfort and vehicle stability. The equations of motion of four-degrees-of-freedom semi-active half-vehicle suspension system incorporating MR dampers are derived and simulated using Matlab/Simulink software. Control performance criteria including bounce and pitch motions are evaluated in both time and frequency domains in order to quantify the effectiveness of proposed system controllers under bump and random road disturbances. Fuzzy self-tuning PID controller gives a better force tracking than fuzzy logic. The performance of both controlled semi-active suspension systems using MR dampers is compared with MR passive and conventional passive to show the efficiency of the proposed controlled suspension systems. The simulation results prove that the semi-active MR suspension system controlled using fuzzy self-tuning PID controller can offer significant improvements of ride comfort and vehicle stability among all investigated systems.