Modeling and Control of a Shear-Valve Mode MR Damper for Semiactive Vehicle Suspension

Abstract

Aiming at demonstrating the feasibility and capability of applying magnetorheological (MR) dampers to the vehicle vibration control, the hyperbolic tangent model is established to characterize the performance of a shear-valve mode MR damper that was developed for a vehicle suspension system in this study. An experimentally derived differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used to find the optimal parameters of the model. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the MR damper for semiactive suspension systems, a model was constructed of a quarter-car suspension system with the damper. A fuzzy control algorithm with a correction factor was adopted to control the output force of the damper and obtain better overall control of the performance of the suspension system. Simulation results indicate that the improved fuzzy control algorithm provides a better ride comfort than normal fuzzy control and passive control. Furthermore, the semiactive suspension system displayed effectively vibration suppression thanks to the MR damper combined with corresponding control algorithms.