Adaptive Optimal Fault Tolerant Control of Self-powered Semi-active Suspension

Suspension system is an important component to ensure handling capability and comfort of passengers simultaneously. For reusing the energy dissipated by damper, a novel theoretical model of semi-active suspension with energy harvesting characteristics is presented. The actuators of the proposed suspension are Magneto-Rheological (MR) dampers with energy harvesting part. Firstly, the electrical model of self-powered MR damper is established through Kirchhoff’s law. Subsequently, a quarter vehicle suspension mechanical-electrical model is formulated. Due to perturbation values introduced by unmodeled dynamics, such as time-varying input disturbance, unpredictable errors of self-powered MR damper, the system parameters of self-powered semi-active suspension are not known completely. Thus, adaptive optimal fault tolerant control algorithm is proposed to ensure the vibration isolation performance with unmodeled dynamics. The actual damping force is described by efficiency factors, meanwhile the ideal control gain matrix is obtained by solving Riccati equation. The vibration isolation performance of the proposed suspension system is compared with passive control in time and frequency domain respectively. The results indicate that adaptive optimal fault tolerant control is more effective than passive control, which can improve vibration isolation capability of suspension significantly.