Adaptive sliding controller with self-tuning fuzzy compensation for vehicle suspension control

Since the hydraulic actuating suspension system has nonlinear and time-varying behavior, it is difficult to establish an accurate dynamic model for a model-based sliding mode control design. Here, a novel model-free adaptive sliding controller is proposed to suppress the position oscillation of the sprung mass in response to road surface variation. This control strategy employs the functional approximation technique to establish the unknown function for releasing the model-based requirement. In addition, a fuzzy scheme with online learning ability is introduced to compensate the functional approximation error for improving the control performance and reducing the implementation difficulty. The important advantages of this approach are to achieve the sliding mode controller design without the system dynamic model requirement and release the trial-and-error work of selecting approximation function. The update laws for the coefficients of the Fourier series functions and the fuzzy tuning parameters are derived from a Lyapunov function to guarantee the control system stability. The experimental results show that the proposed control scheme effectively suppresses the oscillation amplitude of the vehicle sprung mass corresponding to the road surface variation and external uncertainties, and the control performance is better than that of a traditional model-based sliding mode controller. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.