Energy-Saving Robust Control of Nonlinear Suspension Systems Via Exploiting Beneficial Nonlinearities, State-Coupling and Disturbance Simultaneously

Description

Robustness to uncertainties and parametric change, less energy cost, better control performance (e.g., faster stability speed) are several critical issues in controller design of modern vehicle suspension systems. Particularly, energy consumption is more and morerelevant to nowadays industrial and social development. This project is devoted to developing novel control methods for smartly addressing ubiquitous nonlinearity, and inevitable coupling and disturbance influences with faster convergence and significant energy-saving performance.To this aim, coupling and disturbance effect indicators will be innovatively designed so as to assess potential good or bad effects incurred by coupling and disturbance to active suspension systems, and then a finite-time coupling and disturbance effects-triggered control scheme will be established with the second-order sliding mode control techniques. Importantly, some beneficial nonlinearities in stiffness, damping or inertia will be designed based on our preliminary studies to construct a special bio-inspired nonlinear reference model, which will be employed in the overall control scheme, such that not only supervisor vibration controlperformance can be obtained (vibration suppression improved by 60% or more) but also significant energy saving will be achieved (energy saved by 50% or more) simultaneously. The research results of this project will present a totally new energy-saving robust control scheme for nonlinear systems, which can innovatively employ very special and beneficial effects provided by nonlinearities, system coupling and disturbance, traditionally treated as troublesome factors in existing literature results; and provide totally new understanding on these “bad factors” which are inevitably existing in all control systems including vehicle suspensions.Extensive experimental testing with lab testing rigs and potential trials with real cars (collaborated with Guangzhou and Shenzhen companies) will be planned and conducted during this project, definitely with several invention patents to file and potential licensing to deliver eventually.