Analysis of a Sensor Reduction in a Semi-Active Suspension System for a 4-Wheel Vehicle

This paper is devoted to the application of a comfort-oriented suspension semi-active control system to a four wheel vehicle with a minimal sensor layout. To this aim an algorithm recently developed (the Mix-1-Sensor) has been adopted. The Mix-1-Sensor has been shown to be a quasi-optimal control law for a quarter car suspension system equipped with a single sensor. Therefore a sensor layout of four accelerometers is necessary. This paper shows that it is possible to estimate the vertical acceleration of the four corners by means of only three accelerometers. The estimation suffers from high frequency noise that can be managed by filtering. However this induces a phase-shift of the estimated signal. The closed loop system shows that no phase-shift is preferred since the noise is effectively compensated without a dramatic loss of performances.