The suspension system is classified into three types passive suspension, semi-active, and active suspension. The term a quarter car model originated in the early part of the 20th century. It is considered the best way for studying the effectiveness of vehicle stability. This paper presents the modelling and control of a nonlinear active suspension system for a quarter car, the mathematical model represents a spring-mass (Quarter of the chassis) and unsprung mass (the wheel), with two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) system characterized by a pair of the differential equations. The objective of this work is to determine control strategy to deliver better performance with respect sprung displacement; sprung mass velocity; suspension deflection; peak overshoot; setting time. The active control of the suspension system is achieved using fractional-order PID (FOPID) tuned by particle swarm optimization algorithms (PSO algorithms) because the ordinary FOPID did not give good results, and linear quadratic regulator (LQR) control actions. The results are developed and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. It is observed that the LQR controller gives better ride comfort by reducing the RMS error and the vibration of various types of road conditions as compared to an intelligent FOPID controller.