Switched stable control design methodology applied to vehicle rollover prevention based on switched suspension settings

In this study a recent result on the quadratic stability of switched linear time-invariant systems is applied to the problem of vehicle rollover prevention based on selectively switching between two suspension settings. The suggested switching control scheme reduces the transient magnitude of the load transfer ratio (LTR), which is the rollover detection metric, when and if it is above a certain threshold by switching to a stiffer suspension setting from a default soft one. In this way, the controller activates only when the potential for rollover is significant as measured by the LTR. The switching suspension parameters are chosen in a way that results in closed-loop switched roll dynamic response that is guaranteed to be quadratically stable under arbitrary switching. Moreover, a spectral condition is given that allows checking the stability of the switched roll dynamics that is subject to actuator uncertainty when the upper and lower bounds of the uncertain parameters are known. Numerical simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the suggested switched control approach.