Vibration control of a semi-active seat suspension system using magnetorheological damper

Abstract

Seat suspension is an important system to the ride comfort experience of a commercial vehicle's driver and passengers. The usage of magnetorheological (MR) dampers in seat suspension systems has been shown to offer a momentous enhancement regarding to the ride comfort. In the majority, research work on seat MR dampers has been emphasized on the control implementation but most of them were not quite appropriate for the semi-active and nonlinear hysteretic nature of the MR damper. This paper introduces a deeply investigation into the application of a semi-active MR damper for a truck seat suspension, enabling more efficient control algorithm. The proposed control system consists of a system controller that calculates the desired damper force using a fuzzy logic control (FLC) algorithm, and a signum function damper controller that provides an approximation of the command voltage required to track the desired damping force. A mathematical model and the equations of motion of a two degree-of-freedom semi-active seat suspension with an MR damper are derived and simulated using Matlab/Simulink software. The proposed semi-active MR seat suspension is compared to passive and uncontrolled seat suspensions for prescribed base displacements. These inputs are representative of the vibration of the body mass of a passive quarter-vehicle suspension under bump and random-profile road excitation. Seat travel distance and driver body acceleration are assessed as system performance criteria through bump and random road excitations, in order to quantify the efficiency of the proposed semi-active control technique. The simulated results indicate that the proposed FLC of the semi-active MR seat suspension provides a significant enhancement in ride comfort.

Review on Seat Suspension System Technology Development

“…The main objective of implementation of the semi-active seat suspension systems is to find a way to reduce vibration transmissibility in the low-frequencies, in addition to the high performance at high frequencies. Semi-active suspension measures the stiffness and damping characteristics of the isolation system and makes it possible to control the vibration in a broad vibration frequency range [61,62]. Furthermore, if the stiffness matrix of the system is positive definite, then the semi-active control systems are unconditionally stable.…”

“…The main disadvantage of the MRF dampers is the high cost of construction. a broad vibration frequency range [61,62]. Furthermore, if the stiffness matrix of the system is positive definite, then the semi-active control systems are unconditionally stable.…”

A Review of Low-Frequency Active Vibration Control of Seat Suspension Systems

“…An H-infinity-state feedback controller was designed for a semiactive vibration control seating system, and the FW-RMS acceleration was reduced by 22.84% compared with passive vehicle suspension. At the same time, the generated RMS power was 1.21 W. For the controller design, Sky-hook control theory [22][23][24][25], H-infinity control algorithm [26][27][28][29][30][31][32], nonresonance theory [15] , on-off control strategy [33], fuzzy control theory [34][35][36], optimal control theory [37][38][39], lyapunov control scheme [40], PID control algorithm [41] and sliding-mode control algorithm [42] are applied for the design of the controllers.…”

Performance Investigation of Integrated Model of Quarter Car Semi-Active Seat Suspension with Human Model

“…However, they did not consider the seat suspension and human model in detail and they implemented Fuzzy-PID control for active suspension. Metered and Šika [19] proposed a semi-active MR damper for the truck seat suspension. They used FLC to calculate the desired force of the MR damper, and a significant improvement in the ride comfort was observed.…”