MR seat suspension for vibration control of a commercial vehicle

This paper presents vibration control of a commercial vehicle utilising a magnetorheological (MR) seat damper. A cylindrical type of MR seat damper is manufactured and its field-dependant damping forces are experimentally evaluated. The MR seat damper is then incorporated with a full-vehicle model in which conventional passive dampers are installed for primary and cabin suspension, respectively. After formulating the governing equations of motion of the full-vehicle model, a semi-active skyhook controller is realised by adopting a hardware-in-the-loop-simulation (HILS) methodology. Control responses such as acceleration at the driver's seat are evaluated under both bump and random road conditions.