Nonlinear vibration semi-active control of automotive steering using magneto-rheological damper

Traffic accidents are often caused by vibration of automotive steering because the vibration can make a vehicle run like a snake. A novel semi-active vibration control strategy of automotive steering with magneto-rheological (MR) damper is proposed in this paper. An adaptive RBF neural sliding mode controller is designed for the vibration system. It is showed that an equivalent dynamic model for the vibration system is established by using Lagrange method, and then treats it as actual system partially. A feedback control law is designed to make this nominal model stable. Uncertain part of system and outside disturbance are estimated using RBF neural network, and their upper boundary is obtained automatically. By constructing reasonable switch function, state variables can arrive at origin asymptotically along the sliding mode. Strong robust character of control system is proved by stability analysis and a numerical simulation example is performed to support this control scheme.