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Procedia Computer Science 150 (2019) 123–130

13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18)

13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18)
Networked Control for Active Suspension System
Networked Control for Active Suspension System
S.F. Youness, E.C. Lobusov*
S.F. Youness, E.C. Lobusov*
BMSTU, 2-nd Baumanskaya str., 5-1, Moscow 105005, Russia.
BMSTU, 2-nd Baumanskaya str., 5-1, Moscow 105005, Russia.

Abstract
Abstract
A suspension system is one of the most important subsystems in the car; it acts as a bridge between the occupants of a vehicle
A
andsuspension system
the road. This is one
paper of thea simulation
presents most importantof twosubsystems in the for
cases of control car;a it acts
full as a car
model bridge between
active the occupants
suspension system. The of afirst
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case
anda control
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This paper presents
without a simulation
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two cases of control for
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control model car active
In the firstsuspension
approach, system.
there is The first case
a comparison
is a control
between twosystem
controlwithout
methods network,
(PID and while the for
LQR) second is asuspension
active networkedsystems.
control system.
Results Inshown
the first
thatapproach, there than
PID is better is a comparison
LQR when
between
the twotocontrol
goal is controlmethods (PID and
the suspension LQR)
travel of for
the active suspension
car, while systems.
controlling otherResults
parametershown thatsystem
of the PID isisbetter
morethan LQR using
available when
the
LQRgoalandisdepends
to control
on the complexity
suspension travel
of the of the car,index
reference whileused.
controlling other case
The second parameter of the system
is a networked is for
control more available
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suspension
LQR
systemand depends
using on the complexity
a proposed model of CAN of the reference
network index used.
in Matlab The second
to transfer case is values
the readings a networked control
of sensors andforactuators
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system using
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model inside
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is eitherto PID
transfer the readings
or LQR. valuesshow
The results of sensors and actuators
that LQR method has to/from
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controller;
performancethe control
than method
PID when insideofthe
the speed controller
network is either PID or LQR. The results show that LQR method has better
is low.
performance than PID when the speed of network is low.
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2019
This The
is an Author(s).
open Published
access article underbythe
Elsevier B.V.
CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
This is an open
Peer-review
Peer-review access
under
under article under
responsibility
responsibility of
of thethescientific
the CC BY-NC-ND
scientific committee
committee license
of the (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
of the 13th
13th International
International Symposium
Symposium “Intelligent
“IntelligentSystems”
Systems”(INTELS’18)
(INTELS’18).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18)
Keywords: active suspension system; CAN; LQR; PID; networked control system.
Keywords: active suspension system; CAN; LQR; PID; networked control system.

1. Introduction
1. Introduction
The flowing symbols will be use throughout the paper
The flowing symbols will be use throughout the paper
Nomenclature
Nomenclature
Z Heave position of the sprung mass, it is also a body motion as a physical effect
Z Heave position mass, it is also a body motion as a physical effect
velocity of the sprung mass
Z Heave velocity of the sprung mass

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address:author.
* Corresponding evgeny.lobusov@yandex.ru
E-mail address: evgeny.lobusov@yandex.ru
1877-0509 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open
1877-0509 access
© 2019 The article underPublished
Author(s). the CC BY-NC-ND
by Elsevier license
B.V. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review
This under
is an open responsibility
access of the scientific
article under CC BY-NC-NDcommittee of the
license 13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18)
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18)

1877-0509 © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 13th International Symposium “Intelligent Systems” (INTELS’18).
10.1016/j.procs.2019.02.025
124 S.F. Youness et al. / Procedia Computer Science 150 (2019) 123–130
2 S.F.Youness and E.C.Lobusov / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

Z Heave acceleration of the sprung mass, it is also ride comfort as a physical effect
 Pitch angle, it is also a body motion as a physical effect
 Pitch angular velocity
 roll angle, it is also a body motion as a physical effect
 roll angular velocity
Z ufl front-left unsprung mass height, it is also road handling as a physical effect
Z ufl
front-left unsprung mass velocity
Z ufr front-right unsprung mass height, it is also road handling as a physical effect
Z ufr
front-right unsprung mass velocity
Z url rear-left unsprung mass height, it is also road handling as a physical effect
Z url
rear-left unsprung mass velocity
Zurr rear-right unsprung mass height, it is also road handling as a physical effect
Z urr
rear-right unsprung mass velocity
Zsusi Suspension travel for each corner of the car, Zsusi 
Zsi Zu
i, i { fl , fr , rl , rr}
PSS Passive suspension system
P Max. overshoot (peak)
S Settling time (sec)

Automotive systems are nowadays complex distributed computer systems with various demands on networking
capabilities [9,10]. Different types of network technologies (architectures, protocols) are used to connect various
automotive subsystems, and make use of networks’ properties as ease of maintenance and low cost of installation.
A suspension system is one of the most important subsystems in the car; it acts as a bridge between the occupants
of a vehicle and the road. It has two main functionalities: 1) Isolating the vehicle body and passengers from external
disturbances coming from the road, it always relates to riding quality. 2) Maintaining a firm contact between the
road and the tires to provide guidance along the track. This is called handling performance [7].
Automotive suspension systems are usually classified as passive, semi-active and active suspension systems. The
properties of spring and damper in passive suspension determine the dynamic behavior of vehicle, the semi-active
suspension uses a variable damper, while in active suspension system, which was first introduced in early 1950's,
electronic control systems supervise the operation of the suspension elements [1]. Many control approaches exist,
such as Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG), Adaptive Sliding Control (ASC),
Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Neural Network (NN) methods.
Active suspension control systems are typical example of distributed embedded control architectures [6]; many
input and output signals should be transmitted via network to a central controller to supervise and control the
suspension system.
In this paper, a structure of distributed active suspension system is presented. A mathematical model of a full car
active suspension system is presented in the first section; two methods of control (PID and LQR) are applied in the
second section. The proposed model of a CAN bus network is presented in the third section. Simulation results are
presented in the fourth section to show the effect of using networks with different bus speeds. The last section
concludes the paper.

2. Mathematical model of full-car active suspension system

The simulated model of full-car active suspension system (Fig. 1) was adopted from [1-3], it consists of a seven
degree-of-freedom system. In this model, the car body, or sprung mass, is free to heave (Z), roll (), and pitch ().
In order to obtain a linear model, roll and pitch angles are assumed small. The suspension system connects the
sprung mass to the four unsprung masses (front-left, front-right, rear-left and rear-right wheels), which are free to
bounce vertically with respect to the sprung mass. The suspension system consists of a spring, a shock absorber and
 S.F. Youness et al. / Procedia Computer Science 150 (2019) 123–130 125
S.F. Youness and E.C. Lobusov / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 3

a hydraulic actuator at each corner. The shock absorbers are modeled as linear viscous dampers, and the tires are
modeled as linear spring [6].
In order to describe this system, fourteen state variables need to be considered:

x1  Z , x3   , x5   x7  u , x9  u fr , x11  url , x13  u ,

fl rr

x2  Z , x4  , x6  
 x8   u , x10   u , x12   u , x14   u .
fl fr rl rr

Fig. 1. Active suspension system – full car model.

The state space equations in matrix form are given by:

x (t )  A.x (t )  B.u (t )  L.d (t ),

y (t )  c.x (t ).

where
x(t ) : State vector (14 variables).
u (t ) : Control input and it is defined as the force generated at the front-left, front-right, rear-left and rear-right
suspensions respectively as: u (t )  [ Ffl , Ffr , Frl , Frr ]T .
T
d (t ) : The disturbance input and it is defined as: d (t )  [ Zrfl , Zrfr , Zrrl , Zrrr ] . Signals Zrfl , Zrfr , Zrrl , Zrrr are the
terrain disturbance heights at the front-left, front-right, rear-left and rear-right wheels respectively.
y (t ) : The output y (t ) will change; it is selected for specific performance-analysis objectives.

3. Active suspension control system

Active suspension system has a hydraulic actuator in addition to the passive elements. The task of those actuators
is to generate supportive forces that contribute in isolating the body of vehicle from road disturbances. The system
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could be controlled by various methods of control determined by the designer. The right control strategy will give
better compromise between comfort and vehicle stability [4].
Fig. 2 shows simple block diagram to explain how the active suspension can achieve better performance. Fig. 3
describes basic components of active suspension. In this type of suspension, the controller can modify the system
dynamics by activating the actuators [4].
The most interesting performance parameters that should be taken into consideration when designing a vehicle
suspension system are ride comfort, body motion, road handling, and suspension travel. Ride comfort is related to
the acceleration sensed by passengers; body motion is bounce, pitch, and roll of sprung mass; road handling is
associated with the contact forces of tires and the road surface; suspension travel is defined as the displacement
between a sprung mass and an unsprung mass [8].

Fig. 2. Active suspension control system.

Fig. 3. Active suspension component.

3.1. PID controller

Many PID controllers were designed for quarter and half car model as in [1,2]. In this work, four classical PID
controllers are designed to control four actuators controlling the suspension system in a full car model (Fig. 4). The
error signal is the suspension travel, which is the difference in height between the corner of the car and the height of
the unsprung mass in this corner, which should be always equal to 0 (1).

e fl  Z u fl  Z s fl  Z u fl  ( Z  a *   0.5* w * ), e fr  Z u fr  Z s fr  Z u fr  ( Z  a *  0.5* w * )

 (1)
erl  Z url  Z srl  Z url  ( Z  b *   0.5* w * ), err  Z urr  Z srr  Z urr  ( Z  b *  0.5* w * )
 S.F. Youness et al. / Procedia Computer Science 150 (2019) 123–130 127
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3.2. Linear quadratic regulator (LQR)

In [8] two methods of linear quadratic regulator (LQR) were presented for a quarter car model, the conventional
method in which the passenger acceleration is not included, and acceleration-dependent method which gives more
importance to passenger comfort by including passenger acceleration in the performance index. In this paper
(Fig. 5), the control input signal u (t ) is determined to minimize a classical performance index J, consisting of two
definite positive weighting matrices Q,R (2).

t
(2)
 ( x Qx  u Ru)dt.
t t
J
0

Fig. 4. PID controller for active suspension system- full card model.

Fig. 5. LQR controller for active suspension – full car model.

4. Networked active suspension system

In [5,6,9,11] different structures of network are used in vehicles are presented. In this paper a model adopted
from MATLAB example (Effects of Communication Delays on an ABS Control System [13]), using CAN bus, is
presented to connect different sensors and actuators with the controller, which gives commands to control the
suspension system.
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In active suspension control system, there are 7 inputs and 4 outputs. The inputs are  Z , , , Z ufl , Z ufr , Z url , Z urr  ,
 
so (7) nodes are needed to send signals via CAN bus to the controller. The outputs are  Ffl , F fr , Frl , Frr  , so (4)
 
nodes are needed to receive commands from the controller. The controller should be equipped with the ability to
send and receive signals via CAN bus.

Fig. 6. CAN bus structure for active suspension system – full car model.

5. Simulation Results

To evaluate the performance of the control system, three experiments had to be done:
 Control system without network.
 Networked control system, with the following network parameter: bus speed is 500000 bit/sec, and sampling time
is 5 ms.
 Networked, with the following parameters: bus speed is 125000 bit/sec, with sampling time of 20 ms.
The suspension parameters tested in each experiment are heave and acceleration of sprung mass, suspension
travel for the front left and the rear right corners. All above parameters will be presented in three cases; passive
suspension system and active suspension with PID/LQR controller, that to make comparison between them. The
road is a step signal with amplitude 0.1 m, the front side of the car receives this signal firstly, and after a time delay
 0.3 s the rear side of the car receives this signal, car speed is 36 m/s [12].
It is necessary to mention, that the output of the system is connected directly to the state space signals in
simulation model without using any other dynamic sensors.
Results are presented in figures (7–10), each figure consists of 3 parts; part (a) is for a control system without
networking, part (b) and (c) are for networked control system with bus speed 500000 bit/sec, 125000 bit/sec
respectively. Results are summarised in Table 1.
Table 1. Results of simulation.
Without network Bus speed 500000 bit/sec Bus speed 125000 bit/sec
PSS PID LQR PSS PID LQR PSS PID LQR
Z(m) P 0.135 0.12 0.105 0.135 0.12 0.105 0.135 Oscillated 0.12
S 4 1.5 1 4 1.5 1 4 – 1
Z P 3 16 15 3 17 16 3 Oscillated 25
(m/s2) S 4 1 1 4 1 1 4 – 1

Zsus fl P 0.13 0.08 0.07 0.13 0.08 0.07 0.13 Oscillated 0.07
(m) S 4 1 3 4 1 3 4 - 3
Z sus rr P 0.11 0.06 0.14 0.11 0.07 0.14 0.11 Oscillated 0.18
(m) S 4 1 4 4 1 4 4 – 4
 S.F. Youness et al. / Procedia Computer Science 150 (2019) 123–130 129
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Fig. 7. Heave of sprung mass, (a) without network; (b) with network bus speed 500000 bit/sec;
(c) with network bus speed 125000 bit/sec.

Fig. 8. Acceleration of sprung mass, (a) without network; (b) with network bus speed 500000 b/s;
(c) with network bus speed 125000 b/s.

Fig. 9. Suspension travel on FL corner, (a) without network; (b) with network bus speed 500000 b/s;
(c) with network bus speed 125000 b.

Fig. 10. Suspension travel on RR corner, (a) without network; (b) with network bus speed 500000 b/s;
(c) with network bus speed 125000.
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6. Conclusion and future work

Automotive active suspension system was presented in this paper, a mathematical model of full car active
suspension system was introduced, using two methods (PID and LQR) to control the system. A structure for
networked active suspension system using CAN bus was presented. Results showed that using LQR method to
control the system allows more freedom in choosing the parameters for direct control, while PID can provide good
results in case of controlling just the suspension travel. In networked system, where the speed of network is low,
results showed that the performance of LQR method is better than PID.
As a future work, the effect of scheduling of network will be considered in the case, where one central controller
or two are connected to the bus. The mathematical model of Petri net will be extracted to precisely examine the
effects of using networks in the control system.

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[13] www.mathworks.com/help/simevents/examples/effects-of-communication-delays-on-an-abs-control system.html