Imitated skyhook control of a vehicle laterally interconnected air suspension

Abstract

Air springs interconnecting is a promising way to enhance the vibration isolation capability of air suspensions, although, it will diminish the handling performance of a vehicle. Therefore, this paper proposes the implementation of a laterally interconnecting control strategy that gives improved vibration isolation performance with little effect on the handling performance. Bench test and simulation study results show that compared with longitudinal interconnected air suspension, laterally interconnected air suspension can gain satisfactory interconnecting effectiveness by using smaller interconnecting pipes. However, when the vehicle body suffers a large rolling moment, it will damage the handling ability critically. To solve this problem, an imitated skyhook interconnecting state control theory is proposed and the hysteretic range is optimised. The study result shows that imitated-skyhook-controlled interconnecting pipe can improve the vibration isolation capability of the suspension by 51.4-100% when compared with the uncontrolled interconnecting pipe, and can maintain the stability of the suspension to a large extent.