Anti-Jerk Optimal Preview Control Strategy to Enhance Performance of Active and Semi-Active Suspension Systems

This study aims to demonstrate how to compute the damping coefficient of a continuously variable damper for semi-active preview control suspensions while considering the sprung-mass jerk and the controller’s performance advantage. Optimal control theory is used to derive and validate the proposed preview approach to future road disturbances. Despite reduced body acceleration, semi-active suspensions with preview control display an increase in body jerk, implying that ride comfort may not be improved in practice. The optimal preview jerk controller for a semi-active system, on the other hand, can improve ride comfort without degrading road holding by minimizing the performance index that comprises the RMS value of jerk in addition to the RMS values of other outputs. The anti-jerk preview control suspension simulations considering frequency characteristics reveal a difference between suspension systems that consider jerk and those that ignore jerk. The time-domain simulations suggest that the proposed preview control strategy effectively to reduce body jerk, which other controllers cannot.