Ride Comfort Enhancement of Semi-active Vehicle Suspension Based on SMC with PID Sliding Surface parameters Tuning using PSO

This paper presents a sliding mode control (SMC) using proportional-integral-differential (PID) sliding surface (SMC-PID) for semi-active vehicle suspension system employing magneto-rheological (MR) fluid damper to enhance ride comfort and stability.  The fundamental concept is that the robustness property of SMC and good response traits of PID are incorporated to accomplish more acceptable overall performance.  The sliding surface design is modified based on PID and same is derived from the developed dynamic equations. A dynamical model for five-degrees of freedom half car committing MR damper is developed. The particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used to tune a PID sliding surface parameters.  Capability of the proposed controller has been evaluated by numerical simulations. Comparisons with MR-Passive and conventional SMC system have also been provided. From the observation of the simulation results, compared to the MR-Passive system and conventional SMC controlled system, the SMC-PID controlled system can offer a better ride comfort at adapting bump and random road excitations.