Active following fuzzy output feedback sliding mode control of real-vehicle semi-active suspensions

Many semi-active suspension systems have been investigated in various literatures in order to achieve lower energy consumption and as good performance as full-active suspension systems. Full-active suspension systems can achieve a good ride quality by actuators; however, their implementation equipments are expensive. The full-active suspensions are perfect from the point of view of control; hence, semi-active control laws with performance similar to full-active controls have attracted the engineering community for their ease and lower cost of implementation. This paper presents a new active following fuzzy output feedback sliding mode control for a real-vehicle semi-active suspension system. The performance of the proposed controller has been verified by comparing it with passive control and also with the full-active target semi-active approximation control method. In the experiment, it was shown that the proposed method has the effectiveness in stabilizing heave, roll and pitch movement of the car body. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.