Unknown System Dynamics Estimator for Active Vehicle Suspension Control Systems With Time-Varying Delay

This article proposes a novel control method for vehicle active suspension systems in the presence of time-varying input delay and unknown nonlinearities. An unknown system dynamics estimator (USDE), which employs first-order low-pass filter operations and has only one tuning parameter, is constructed to deal with unknown nonlinearities. With this USDE, the widely used function approximators (e.g., neural networks and fuzzy-logic systems) are not needed, and the intermediate variables and observer used in the traditional estimators are not required. This estimator has a reduced computational burden, trivial parameter tuning and guaranteed convergence. Moreover, a predictor-based compensation strategy is developed to handle the time-varying input delay. Finally, we combine the suggested USDE and predictor to design a feedback controller to attenuate the vibrations of vehicle body and retain the required suspension performances. Theoretical analysis is carried out via the Lyapunov-Krasovkii functional to prove the stability of the closed-loop system. Simulation results based on professional vehicle simulation software Carsim are provided to show the efficiency of the proposed control scheme.