A Comparative Analysis of PID,LQR and Fuzzy
Logic Controller for Active Suspension System using
3 Degree of Freedom Quarter Car Model
Jumi Bharali
M.E. student, Department of Electrical Engineering
Jorhat Engineering College
Jorhat-785007, Assam, India
jumibharali41@gmail.com
Abstract—Suspension system plays an important role in
isolating vehicle body from road shocks and vibrations. The aim
of suspension system is to improve ride comfort, road handling
and stability of vehicles. Three different active controllers are
designed using 3 Degree Of Freedom (DOF) quarter car model to
compare the performance of three controllers with the passive
suspension system. The three controllers designed are PID
controller, Linear Quadratic Controller (LQR) and Fuzzy logic
controller. In this work, MATLAB/SIMULINK software is used
for simulation purpose and simulation result demonstrate that
active suspension system shows better result in comparison to
passive suspension system with reference to maximum amplitude,
body acceleration, suspension deflection and settling time. Also
the result of comparison displays that fuzzy logic control exhibits
better functioning and stability as compared to other control
methods and passive as well.
Keywords—Degree of freedom(DOF),PID controller,LQR
controller,Fuzzy logic controller,body acceleration,suspension
deflection,settling time.
I. INTRODUCTION
A suspension system is divided into three types depending
upon principle of operating: passive suspension, semi-active
suspension and active suspension system. Passive suspension
system consists of springs and dampers. Softer dampers
provide a more comfortable drive and stiffer damper provide
more stable drive. Therefore, compromise has to make between
driving comfort and stability.
In semi active suspension system consists of a variable
damper that can adapt to actual demands. The active
suspension system contains separate actuator that can exert
extra force on the suspension system. Different characteristics
can be considered in design of a suspension system [5]. It is not
possible to optimize all these parameters all together in a
suspension system. But a better trade- off among these
parameters can be achieved in active suspension system [5]
978-1-4673-8587-9/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Mrinal Buragohain
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
Jorhat Engineering College
Jorhat-785007, Assam, India
mrinalburagohain@gmail.com
In the recent years, many researchers have investigated
different types of active suspension system using variety of
models like 1/4 or quarter car model, 1/2 or half car model, full
car model etc. Initially researchers opted for linear lower order
models like 2 degree of quarter car model of active suspension
system for analysis and research purpose. 2 DOF quarter car
models are successfully applied using control techniques like
PID, LQR, LQG, FUZZY, sliding mode control, composite
nonlinear feedback control[1][2][3][4][5]. As with increasing
numbers of degree of freedom the characteristics of system
change, a 3 DOF system is used and a fuzzy logic controller for
the suspension system is designed and analyzed to compare
fuzzy logic controller with that of passive suspension system
[6].
In this work a 3 DOF quarter car model is modeled and
three different control methods namely PID, LQR and fuzzy
are developed and the response of the control methods are
compared with that of passive suspension system. Fuzzy logic
controller is designed using MATLAB‟s Fuzzy Logic Toolbox
and the overall system is designed using MATLAB coding and
SIMULINK toolbox.
Section II gives description of 3 degree of freedom quarter
car model active suspension system. Section III gives the
formulation and design of the three proposed controllers.
Section IV gives description of simulation result and
comparison of control schemes. Section V gives the
conclusion.
II. MODELLING OF 3 DOF QUARTER CAR MODEL
In this work, a 3 DOF quarter car model is used. It is
simplified version of the full car model representing most of
the features of the full car model. It consists of passenger mass
along with the seat which is represented using spring and
damper. The sprung mass, also known as mas of the car body
is supported on springs and dampers and the unsprung mass
represents mass of wheel. Tyre is replaced by using spring.
Fig. 1 represents the 3 DOF quarter car model for active
suspension system [7].
 ̇
⁄ ( ) ( ) ( )
[ ]
(10)
The passive suspension system can be designed using same
equations with fa=0. Hydraulic dynamics of force actuator is
not taken into account here and it is believed that the required
force is applied in between the sprung and unsprung mass.
Table I shows value of all the system parameters used in the
model [6].

TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETER VALUES

System parameter
symbol
Description value Unit
mp Passenger mass 100 Kg
Sprung mass 2050 Kg
ms Unsprung mass 100 Kg
mus Stiffness of the seat 100000 N/m
Fig.1. 3 DOF quarter car model of active suspension system [7]. kp Damping coefficient of seat 6000 Ns/m
cp Stiffness of suspension system 400000 N/m
Damping coeffcient of 5000 Ns/m
ks suspension system
A. Equations cs Stiffness of the tyre 2000000 N/m
Differential equations of the system are attained by
implementing Newton‟s second law of motion to the seat,
sprung mass and unsprung mass and the equations are as
III. CONTROLLER DESIGN
follows.
In this work, three controllers are designed i.e. PID, LQR,
̈ ( ) ( ̇ ̇ ) (1) Fuzzy logic controller.
̈ ( ) ( ̇ ̇ ) ( .
) ( ̇ ̇ ) (2) A. PID controller
̈ ( ) ( ̇ ̇ ) Proportional – Integral – Derivative (PID) controller is a
( ) (3) commonly used control scheme in many industrial
control systems. In this work, PID controller is designed
By taking ̇ ̇ such that the output parameter stabilizes quickly under
̇ , the equation can be written in terms of state presence of road disturbance thereby minimizing error.
variable as follows
̇ (4)
Where X=state input variable matrix
U=control input variable matrix
W=road input matrix.
̇ (5)
̇ , ( ) ( )- (6)
̇ (7) Fig.2. PID controller [8].

̇
The PID controller is represented by:
⁄ ( ) ( ) ( ) () () ∫ ( ) (11)
[ ]
( )
Where Kp is the proportional gain, Ki is the integral
(8) gain and Kd is derivative gain, e is the positional error.
There are several tuning method used for finding proper
Kp, Ki and Kd value. To obtain the desired response,
̇ (9) the following sequence can be used as a general rule:
  in order to improve the rise time a proportional Optimal disturbance feed forward controller gain is
element should be added, given by
 in order to improve the overshoot, a derivative , ( ) - [( )
{
element should be added,
( )]} (16)
 in order to improve the steady state error, an
integral element should be added [8]. P matrix must satisfy the reduced form of the standard
Riccati equation shown in eq. (17).
In this work, genetic algorithm technique is used for
proper tuning of PID parameters.
̇ ( ) ( )
B. LQR controller (17)
I. LQR controller design for linear systems with
measurable disturbances

Standard LQR control approach syntheses an optimal

controller for systems without disturbances. But most of
the systems are affected by disturbances that also effect
control optimality. In this section, the LQR control
design for linear systems that are excited by
disturbances will be presented.
II. Problem definition
Considering general form of a linear time-varying
system including disturbances as follows:
̇ ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) (12)
Where, and .The disturbances
( ) is supposed to be measurable in real time.
The LQR problem for the system defined by eq.(12) is
to find a control input u(t) which minimizes the
objective function J defined by (13). Fig.3. LQR control scheme for system with measurable
disturbances[9].
∫ ,( ) ( )
-
C. FUZZY logic controller
∫ ,( ) ( ) ( Fuzzy logic control (FLC) algorithm gives a means of
) ) - converting a linguistic control technique and it is widely
used in vehicle applications. In this work, the
application of fuzzy logic technique to design a
∫ , ( ) ( ) ( controller for the active vehicle suspension system to
) - ∫ * improve the suspension system performance is
+ demonstrated.
The steps in designing fuzzy logic controller are as
∫ ,( )+ (
follows:
)-
 Gaussian membership functions are defined for each
∫ , ( ) (13) variable that are used to fuzzify inputs and output of
suspension system. Linguistic variables assigned to
Different from the standard LQR problem is the second
these fuzzy sets are, NB, NM, NS, ZE, PS, PM and PB.
group of terms that depends on disturbances w(t).
Total 49 rules are made.
Therefore, the control law has to be a function of both
x(t) and w(t).  .Mamdani type inference method and centroid
defuzzification method are used. Output of fuzzy
Using Pontryagin‟s maximum principle and Euler-
controller is actuator force based on two inputs i.e. the
Lagrange equation, the optimal control is defined by,
sprung mass displacement error and the corresponding
. (14)
rate of change of velocity of the suspension system.
Optimal state feedback controller gain is given by
Fuzzy control rules are made in the form of table II of
( ) (15)
the designed fuzzy logic controller.
 TABLE II. FUZZY CONTROL RULES

Displacement(error)
PB PM PS ZE NS NM NB
PB PB PM PM PB PM PS ZE
PM PM PM PM PM PS ZE NS
Velocity(error rate)

PS PM PM PM PS ZE NS NM
ZE PM PM PS ZE NS NM NM
NS PM PS ZE NS NM NM NM
NM PS ZE NS NM NM NM NM
NB ZE NS NM NM NM NM NM
Fig.4(c). Membership function for output actuator force.

Fig.4(a). Membership function for relative displacement error.

Fig.5. Fuzzy surface of the proposed controller with 49 rules.

Fig.5 shows the fuzzy surface for the designed

controller using the Gaussian membership function
IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
A step input signal of amplitude 0.1 m is chosen to test the
designed system. This step signal represents a pavement which
is a sudden change of road height of 10 cm.
A. PID controller
In MATLAB/SIMULINK environment using proper coding
following values of PID parameters are found: Kp= 10000, Ki=
23470 and Kd= 50000.
B. LQR controller
Using Matlab coding he values for and used in the
Fig.4(b). Membership function for relative velocity error. simulation are found to be as,
=1.0e+04 *
[-0.3288 0.6858 1.7517 0.1025 -0.3464 0.0035]
and

C. FUZZY controller
Fuzzy logic controller is designed using
MALAB/SIMULINK‟s FUZZY logic toolbox. Instead of using
variable step „ode45‟solver, „ode 8‟ solver with 0.01 sampling
time is used throughout the experiment as the response gets
much slower in „ode 45‟. Justification factor used are Ke=
0.85and Kec=12. Defuzzification factor used is K0=2.
D. Result

Fig.8. Seat velocity (m/sec) vs. time (sec).

Fig.6. Passenger acceleration (m/sec2) vs. time (sec).

Fig. 9. Sprung mass velocity (m/sec) vs. time(sec).

Fig.7. Suspension deflection (m) vs. time (sec).

Fig.10. Sprung mass displacement (m) vs. time (sec).

Fig. 6,7,8,9 and 10 show the comparison between the PID,

Fuzzy and LQR based active suspension system and passive
suspension system. Table III, IV, V, VI and VII show the
comparison of the active suspension system equipped with In case of performance parameters like seat acceleration,
proposed controllers with passive suspension system. suspension travel, sprung mass velocity, seat velocity, sprung
mass displacement Fuzzy control scheme gives better result as
TABLE III. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SUSPENSION compared to other control methods. From the simulation
DEFLECTION
result, it is clear that all the three controllers are successfully
Suspension deflection designed but Fuzzy control scheme gives better performance
LQR PID FUZZY PASSIVE
0.04
than other control methods and passive system.
Maximum peak value (m) 0.0285 0 0.0685
32
Settling time (sec.) 2.2 0.7 0.6 7.5 V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Steady state error (%) 0 0 0 0 The author would like to thank Dr. Mrinal Buragohain,
Associate Professor of Jorhat Engineering College, India for
helpful advice and encouragement throughout the period of
TABLE IV. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SEAT ACCELERATION
this work.
Seat acceleration
LQR PID FUZZY PASSIVE
Maximum peak value 23.6 46.425 33.320
23.7147
(m/sec^2) 09 1 3
Settling time (sec.) 2 0.9 0.7 8.5
REFERENCES
Steady state error (%) 0 0 0 0 [1] Mat Hussin Ab. Talib, Intan Z. Mat Darns, “Self-Tuning PID Controller
for active suspension system with hydraulic actuator,”IEEE Symposium
on Computers & Informatics(ISCI),pp.86-91,April 2013.
TABLE V. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SEAT VELOCITY [2] Salah G. Foda, “Fuzzy control of a quarter-car suspension system,” 12th
International Conference on Microelectronics,2000
Seat velocity [3] Ismail etal“A linear model of quarter car active suspension system using
LQR PID FUZZY PASSIVE composite nonlinear feedback control,”2012 IEEE Student Conference
Maximum peak value 1.08 on Research and Development(SCOReD).
1.7716 0.9842 1.2525
(m/sec) 68
[4] Elnaz Akbari, Morteza Farsadi, Intan Z.Mat Darus,Ramin Ghelichi, “
Settling time (sec.) 2 1 0.8 9
Observer Design for Active Suspension System U sing Sliding Mode
Steady state error (%) 0 0 0 0 Control,” 2010 IEEE Student Conference on Research and
Development (SCOReD 2010), 13 - 14 Dec 2010, Putrajaya, Malaysia
K. Elissa.
TABLE VI. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SPRUNG MASS [5] A.H. Shirdel ,E. Gatavi, Z. Hashemiyan, “Comparison of H-∞ and
VELOCITY optimized-LQR controller in active suspension system,”Second
International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Modelling and
Sprung mass velocity
Simulation ,2010.
LQR PID FUZZY PASSIVE
Maximum peak value 0.99 [6] Tinnavelli Ramamohan Rao and Punjala Anusha, “Active Suspension
1.623 0.9664 1.1545 System of a 3 DOF Quarter Car Using Fuzzy Logic Control for Ride
(m/sec) 19
Settling time (sec.) 2.1 1 0.9 9 Comfort,” 2013 International Conference on Control, Automation,
Steady state error (%) 0 0 0 0 Robotics and Embedded(CARE).
[7] B.Pratheepa, “Modeling and simulation of automobile suspension
system,” Frontiers in Automobile and Mechanical Engineering
(FAME),2010.
TABLE VII. PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF SPRUNG MASS
DISPLACEMENT [8] Sallehuddin Mohamed Haris, Wajdi S. Aboud, “International
Conference onAdvanced Mechatronics Systems (ICAMechS),2011.
Sprung mass displacement [9] Tuan-Anh Nguyen, “Application of Optimization Methods to Controller
LQR PID FUZZY PASSIVE DesignforActiveSuspensions”2006.
Maximum peak value 0.15
0.1412 0.1 0.1823
(m/sec) 25
Settling time (sec.) 2.2 1 0.8 8
Steady state error (%) 0 0 0 0

V. CONCLUSIONS
The potential for improved ride comfort and better road
holding using Fuzzy, LQR and PID controller design is
examined for the analysis of a three degree of freedom quarter
car model. Maximum peak to peak amplitude, steady state
error and settling time are used to investigate the performance
characteristics of different controller schemes. Simulation
results depict that there are considerable differences between
the results of passive and active suspension system. Another
conclusion is that the three control schemes proposed here
gave good results especially for reduction of settling time and
maximum peak to peak amplitude.