Vehicle height control of electronic air suspension system based on mixed logical dynamical modelling

Due to the coexistence and coupling of continuous variables and discrete events, the vehicle height adjustment process of electronic air suspension system can be regarded as a typical hybrid system. Therefore, the hybrid system theory was applied to design a novel vehicle height control strategy in this paper. A nonlinear mechanism model of the vehicle height adjustment system was established based on vehicle system dynamics and thermodynamic theory for variable-mass gas charge/discharge system. In order to model both the continuous/discrete dynamics of vehicle height adjustment process and the on-off statuses switching of solenoid valves, the framework of mixed logical dynamical (MLD) modelling was used. On the basis of the vehicle height adjustment control strategy, the MLD model of the adjustment process was built by introducing auxiliary logical variables and auxiliary continuous variables. Then, the co-simulation of the nonlinear mechanism model and the MLD model was conducted based on the compiling of HYSDEL. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control strategy can not only adjust the vehicle height effectively, but also achieve the on-off statuses direct control of solenoid valves.