Comprehensive Analysis for Influence of Controllable Damper Time Delay on Semi-Active Suspension Control Strategies

This paper presents a comprehensive comparison and analysis for the effect of time delay on the five most representative semi-active suspension control strategies, and refers to four unsolved problems related to semi-active suspension performance and delay mechanism that existed. Dynamic characteristics of a commercially available continuous damping control (CDC) damper were first studied, and a material test system (MTS) load frame was used to depict the velocity-force map for a CDC damper. Both inverse and boundary models were developed to determine dynamic characteristics of the damper. In addition, in order for an improper damper delay of the form t+τ to be corrected, a delay mechanism of controllable damper was discussed in detail. Numerical simulation for five control strategies, i.e., modified skyhook control SC, hybrid control (HC), COC, model reference sliding mode control (MRSMC), and integrated error neuro control (IENC), with three different time delays: 5 ms, 10 ms, and 15 ms was performed. Simulation results displayed that by changing control weights/variables, performance of all five control strategies varied from being ride comfort oriented to being road handling oriented. Furthermore, increase in delay time resulted in deterioration of both ride comfort and road handling. Specifically, ride comfort was affected more than road handling. The answers to all four questions were finally provided according to simulation results.