This paper presents some of the work done to model the dynamics of TRW’s semi-active roll control (SARC) actuator. The SARC system is designed to reduce vehicle body roll in a turn and to allow for improved ride and handling while driving straight ahead. The SARC system consists of a hydraulic actuator, vehicle state sensors and an electronic control unit (ECU). The vehicle state sensors and ECU are optional in that existing ESC/VSC elements could be used to control the actuator with the proper control algorithms. The actuator is a compact hydraulic unit consisting of a linear actuator, pressurized reservoir, and associated valves. It mounts between one end of the sway bar and the vehicle suspension, and essentially works to engage or disengage the sway bar. The model was developed to understand and predict the dynamic behavior of the actuator for simulated vehicle inputs. The model was developed in Matlab/Simulink and was validated against experimental test rig data. Model parameters were determined from experimental data and basic engineering principles. This included modeling the dynamics of the seal frictions and the multi-stage control valve. Different vehicle inputs were simulated and the behavior of the actuator under various load regimes was matched to experimental test-rig data. The results show that this model is a reasonably accurate representation of the dynamics of the physical system allowing for usage in controller development and synthesis, and integrating in to vehicle models for integrated software-in-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-loop (HIL) development.

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