Research on control of adjustable damping shock absorbers for off-road vehicles based on prescribed performance control

Real-time adjustment of shock absorber damping is crucial for improving the ride comfort of off-road vehicles. To enhance its effectiveness in suppressing vehicle body vibrations, this study proposes a prescribed performance control strategy based on vehicle body state estimation. First, a vehicle body vibration dynamics model is established to estimate the relative motion state of the vehicle body in real time, and the tracking error of the controller is calculated based on the vehicle body motion state. Simultaneously, a prescribed performance controller for the adjustable damping shock absorber is designed, followed by stability analysis and hardware-in-the-loop simulation validation. Finally, the practical effectiveness of the controller is examined through full-vehicle experiments. The results indicate that the designed controller can effectively suppress vehicle body vibrations, reducing vertical vibration acceleration by 25.11% and vertical vibration amplitude by 30.04%. This study provides a feasible control method for improving the ride comfort of off-road vehicles.