On-line Damping Estimation in Road Vehicle Semi-active Suspension Systems

Semi-active suspensions are characterized by a run-time variation of the damping force according to the actual vehicle dynamics. Depending on the specific technology, the damping ratio is selected by indirectly acting on a related variable, e.g., in magneto-rheological devices, the viscosity of the damper fluid is changed under the action of a magnetic field generated by a manipulated current. Unexpected changes of the device, e.g., due to aging or damages, may affect the performance of the suspension, as the current is no longer mapped onto the nominal damping ratio. In this paper, an on-line damping estimation method is proposed for anomaly detection in semi-active dampers, based on inertial measurements only. Experimental tests on a vehicle set-up show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.