Ride comfort enhancement of heavy vehicles using magnetorheological seat suspension

This paper investigates the application of a controlled MR damper for a semi-active seat suspension for heavy vehicles, enabling more appropriate control algorithm. The proposed control system consists of a system controller that calculates the desired damping force using a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller tuned using genetic algorithm (GA), and a continuous state damper controller that estimates the command voltage that is required to track the desired damping force. The controlled semi-active seat suspension is compared to a passive seat suspension for predetermined base displacements. These inputs are calculated separately from the vibration of the body mass of a passive quarter-vehicle suspension. System performance criteria are evaluated in both time and frequency domains, in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed semi-active control algorithm. The generated results show that the proposed genetic PID controller of MR seat suspension offers a considerable enhancement of the ride comfort.