A Model Predictive Control approach for semi-active suspension control problem of a full car

Abstract

In this paper, a semi-active suspension Model Predictive Control (MPC) is designed for a full vehicle system equipped with 4 semi-active dampers. The main challenge in the semi-active suspension control problem is to tackle with the dissipativity constraints of the semi-active dampers. The constraints are here recasted as input and state constraints. The controller is designed in the MPC framework where the effects of the unknown road disturbances are taken into account. An observer approach allows to estimate the road disturbance information to be used by the controller during the prediction step. Then, the MPC suspension control law with road estimation (but without road preview) is computed by minimizing a quadratic cost function, giving a trade-off between the comfort and the handling, while guaranteeing phyiscal constraints of the semi-active dampers. Simulation results performed on a nonlinear full car model are presented in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.