Improving Ride Comfort in Autonomous Vehicles with Fractional-Order SMC Active Suspension under Road Uncertainties

Ensuring ride comfort, handling stability, and road adaptability is crucial for developing smart and resilient transportation systems. This paper presents a novel Fractional-Order Sliding Mode Control (FOSMC) strategy for active suspension systems in Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs/AVs), aiming to enhance ride comfort and robustness under varying road and load conditions. Unlike conventional integer-order SMC approaches, the proposed FOSMC integrates fractional calculus into the sliding surface design, introducing memory and hereditary dynamics that more accurately represent vehicle behavior. This framework mitigates the effect of disturbances, reduces chattering, and enhances actuator operation for intelligent and efficient mobility solutions. The controller’s stability is rigorously analyzed using Lyapunov theory, confirming global asymptotic stability. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed FOSMC reduces suspension defection by 36%, and control chattering by more than 50% when compared to traditional SMC, demonstrating its potential to improve comfort, stability, and safety in intelligent mobility applications.