Proportional plus integral plus derivative control of nonlinear full-car electrohydraulic suspensions using global and evolutionary optimization techniques

Resolving the trade-offs between suspension travel, ride comfort, road holding, vehicle handling and power consumption is the primary challenge in the design of active vehicle suspension system. Multi-loop proportional + integral + derivative controllers' gains tuning with global and evolutionary optimization techniques is proposed to realize the best compromise between these conflicting criteria for a nonlinear full-car electrohydraulic active vehicle suspension system. Global and evolutionary optimization methods adopted include: controlled random search, differential evolution, particle swarm optimization, modified particle swarm optimization and modified controlled random search. The most improved performance was achieved with the differential evolution algorithm. The modified particle swarm optimization and modified controlled random search algorithms performed better than their predecessors, with modified controlled random search performing better than modified particle swarm optimization in all aspects of performance investigated both in time and frequency domain analyses.