The Control of an Active Seat Suspension Using an Optimised Fuzzy Logic Controller, Based on Preview Information from a Full Vehicle Model

The use of suspension preview information obtained from a quarter vehicle model (QvM) to control an active seat has been shown by the authors to be very promising, in terms of improved ride comfort. However, in reality, a road vehicle will be subjected to disturbances from all four wheels, and therefore the concept of preview enhanced control should be applied to a full vehicle model. In this paper, different preview scenarios are examined, in which suspension data is taken from all or limited axles. Accordingly, three control strategies are hypothesized—namely, front-left suspension (FLS), front axle (FA), and four wheel (4W). The former utilises suspension displacement and velocity preview information from the vehicle suspension nearest to the driver’s seat. The FA uses similar preview information, but from both the front-left and front-right suspensions. The 4W controller employs similar preview information from all of the vehicle suspensions. To cope with friction non-linearities, as well as constraints on the active actuator displacement and force capabilities, three optimal fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs) are developed. The structure of each FLC, including membership functions, scaling factors, and rule base, was sequentially optimised based on improving the seat effective amplitude transmissibility (SEAT) factor in the vertical direction, using the particle swarming optimisation (PSO) algorithm. These strategies were evaluated in simulation according to ISO 2631-1, using different road disturbances at a range of vehicle forward speeds. The results show that the proposed controllers are very effective in attenuating the vertical acceleration at the driver’s seat, when compared with a passive system. The controller that utilised suspension preview information from all four corners of the car provided the best seat isolation performance, independent of vehicle speed. Finally, to reduce the implementation cost of the “four suspension” controller, a practical alternative is developed that requires less measured preview information.