Linear disturbance observer based sliding mode control for active suspension systems with non-ideal actuator

This paper considers the problem of designing active vehicle suspension systems in which the actuator, being affected by dead-zone and hysteresis, is non-ideal. A new method based on a disturbance observer combined with sliding mode control is proposed for compensating the effect of the actuator imperfections, uncertainties in suspension parameters and an unknown road profile. The stability of the disturbance estimator and active suspension system is proved. The performance of the scheme is assessed by simulation and experimentation on a laboratory emulation of a quarter car suspension system. The proposed controller is compared with a recently developed adaptive tracking control for active suspension system with the non-ideal actuator. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.