Design of active suspension control based upon use of tubular linear motor and quarter-car model

The design, fabrication, and testing of a quarter-car facility coupled with various control algorithms are presented in this thesis. An experimental linear tubular motor, capable of producing a 52-N force, provides control actuation to the model. Controllers consisting of two designs were implemented: a classical controller employing lead and lag networks and a state-space feedback design. Each design was extensively simulated to screen for receptiveness to actuation force limitations and robustness regarding the inexact tire modeling. The goal of each controller was to minimize the acceleration of the sprung mass in the presence of simulated road disturbances, modeled by both sinusoidal and step input excitation wheels. Different reference velocity inputs were applied to the control scheme. Responses to a zero reference were juxtaposed to those that resulted from tracking a reference built off a model that incorporated inertial-frame damping attached to the sprung mass. The outcome of this comparison was that low-frequency disturbances were attenuated better when tracking a zero reference, but the reference relaxation introduced by the inertialframe damping model allowed for better-attenuated high frequency signals. Employing an inertial-frame damping value of 250 N-s/m, the rejected frequency component of the system response synchronous with the disturbance input excitation of 40 rad/s bettered by 33% and 28% when feeding control force from the classical controller and state-space controller, respectively. The experimental analysis conducted on the classical and state-space controllers produced sinusoidal disturbance rejection of at worst 50% within their respective bandwidths. At 25 rad/s, the classical controller was able to remove 80% of the base component synchronous with the disturbance excitation frequency, while the state-space controller filtered out nearly 60%. Analysis on the system's ability to reject step disturbances was greatly confounded with the destructive lateral loading transferred during the excitation process. As a result, subjection to excitation could only occur up to 25 rad/s. At the 20 rad/s response synchronous to the disturbance excitation, the classical and state-space controllers removed 85% and 70% of the disturbance, respectively. Sharp spikes in timebased amplitude were present due to the binding that ensued during testing.