Adaptive ride height controller design for vehicle active suspension systems with uncertain sprung mass and time‐varying disturbance

Abstract In this article, we address the problem of ride height tracking control of the automotive active air suspension (AAS) system with uncertain sprung mass and external time‐varying disturbances. The proposed adaptive robust control approach guarantees that (i) the ride height converges towards, and stays within, an arbitrarily small neighborhood of the desired height, attaining uniform ultimate boundedness; (ii) the closed‐loop AAS system is (1) adaptive to uncertain sprung mass caused by the change of payload through the design of a projector‐based mass estimator; and, (2) robust to external time‐varying disturbance by developing a nonlinear disturbance observer. At last, co‐simulation (AMESim‐Matlab/Simulink) and experimental tests on a self‐fabricated quarter‐car test rig are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed method.