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Nader Jalili

Mem. ASME
Assistant Professor,
Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Clemson University,
Clemson, SC 29634-0921
e-mail: jalili@clemson.edu
A Comparative Study and Analysis
of Semi-Active Vibration-Control
Systems
Semi-active (SA) vibration-control systems are those which otherwise passively generated
damping or spring forces are modulated according to a parameter tuning policy with only
a small amount of control effort. SA units, as their name implies, ll the gap between
purely passive and fully active vibration-control systems and offer the reliability of pas-
sive systems, yet maintain the versatility and adaptability of fully active devices. During
recent years there has been considerable interest towards practical implementation of
these systems for their low energy requirement and cost. This paper briey reviews the
basic theoretical concepts for SA vibration-control design and implementation, and sur-
veys recent developments and control techniques for these systems. Some related practical
applications in vehicle suspensions are also presented. DOI: 10.1115/1.1500336
1 Introduction
In most of todays mechatronic systems a number of possible
devices, such as reaction or momentum wheels, rotating devices
and electric motors are essential to the systems operation and
performance. These devices, however, can also be sources of det-
rimental vibrations that may signicantly inuence the mission
performance, effectiveness and accuracy of operation. Several
techniques are utilized to either limit or alter the vibration re-
sponse of such systems. In vibration isolation either the source of
vibration is isolated from the system of concern also called
force transmissibility, see Fig. 1a, or the device is protected
from vibration of its point of attachment also called displace-
ment transmissibility, see Fig. 1b. Unlike the isolator, a vibra-
tion absorber consists of a secondary system usually mass-spring-
damper trio added to the primary device to protect it from
vibrating see Fig. 1c. By properly selecting absorber mass,
stiffness, and damping, the vibration of the primary system can be
suppressed 1.
A vibration-control system, either as an isolator or an absorber,
is said to be active, passive, or semi-active depending on the
amount of external power required for the system to perform its
function, see Fig. 2, 2. A passive vibration-control unit consists
of a resilient member stiffness and an energy dissipator damper
to either absorb vibratory energy or load the transmission path of
the disturbing vibration 3, Fig. 2a. This conguration has sig-
nicant limitations in structural applications where broadband dis-
turbances of highly uncertain nature are encountered. In order to
compensate for these limitations, active vibration-control systems
are utilized. With an additional active force introduced as a part of
a suspension unit, u(t) in Fig. 2b, the vibration-control system
is then controlled using different algorithms to make it more re-
sponsive to sources of disturbance 2,46. A combination of
active/passive treatment is intended to reduce the amount of
external power necessary to achieve the desired performance
characteristics 7.
In view of these systems, it often occurs that the system is
required to operate over a wide band load and frequency range
which is impossible to meet with a single choice of stiffness and
damping. If the desired response characteristics cannot be ob-
tained, an active vibration-control system may provide an attrac-
tive alternative for such broadband disturbances. However, such
active congurations suffer from control-induced instability in ad-
dition to the large control effort requirement. This is a serious
concern that prevents common usage in most industrial applica-
tions. On the other hand, passive vibration-control systems espe-
cially vibration absorbers are often hampered by a phenomenon
known as de-tuning. This occurs due to deterioration of the
structural parameters and/or variations in the excitation frequency,
and the passive system will no longer be effective.
Semi-active also known as adaptive-passive conguration ad-
dresses these limitations by effectively integrating a tuning control
scheme with tunable passive devices. For this, active force gen-
erators are replaced by modulated variable compartments such as
variable rate damper and stiffness, see Fig. 2c 810. These
variable components are referred to as tunable parameters of
the vibration-control system, which are re-tailored via a tuning
control thus resulting in semi-actively inducing optimal operation.
Much attention is being paid to these arrangements for their low
energy requirement and cost. Recent advances in smart materials
and adjustable dampers and absorbers have signicantly contrib-
uted to applicability of these systems 1113.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
briey reviews semi-active vibration-control system design as a
vibration absorber as well as an isolator. Adjustable suspension
elements including variable rate dampers and springs are pre-
sented in Section 3. Section 4 overviews the fundamental prin-
ciples of automotive semi-active suspensions, followed by recent
advances in this area. Application of control techniques to semi-
active vibration-control systems is presented in Section 5 and -
nally Section 6 concludes the study.
2 Semi-Active Vibration-Control System Design
SA vibration-control systems can achieve the majority of the
performance characteristics of fully active systems, thus allowing
for a wide class of applications. The idea of SA conguration is
very simple: to replace active force generators with continually
adjustable elements which can vary and/or shift the rate of the
energy dissipation in response to instantaneous condition of mo-
tion. This section presents the basic understanding, fundamental
principles and design issues for SA vibration-control systems.
2.1 Semi-Active Vibration Absorption Design. A vibra-
tion absorber is elastically attached to the vibrating body to alle-
viate detrimental oscillations from its point of attachment see Fig.
2. The underlying proposition for SA absorber is to properly ad-
just the absorber parameters such that it becomes absorbent of
the vibratory energy within the frequency interval of interest.
Contributed by the Technical Committee on Vibration and Sound for publication
in the JOURNAL OF VIBRATION AND ACOUSTICS. Manuscript received May 2001;
Revised April 2002. Associate Editor: R. L. Clark.
Copyright 2002 by ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 593
In order to explain the SA absorber concept, a single-degree-of-
freedom SDOF primary system with an SDOF absorber attach-
ment is considered as shown in Fig. 3. It is easy to show that the
transfer function between the excitation force and primary system
displacement can be expressed as
TF s
X
p
s
F s

m
a
s
2
c
a
sk
a
H s

(1)
where
H sm
p
s
2
c
p
c
a
sk
p
k
a
m
a
s
2
c
a
sk
a

c
a
sk
a

2
, (2)
x
p
(t) is the primary system displacement, f (t) is the external
force, k
a
and c
a
are the adjustable absorber stiffness and damping
coefcients and X
p
(s) and F(s) are the Laplace transformations
of x
p
(t) and f (t), respectively.
The steady state displacement of the primary system due to a
harmonic excitation is then

X
p
j
F j

k
a
m
a

2
j c
a

H j
(3)
where is the disturbance frequency and j 1. Utilizing ad-
justable properties of SA unit i.e., variable rate damper c
a
and
spring k
a
, an appropriate parameter tuning scheme is selected to
minimize the vibration of the primary system subject to external
disturbance f (t).
2.1.1 Harmonic Excitation. When excitation is tonal, the ab-
sorber is generally tuned at the disturbance frequency. For com-
plete attenuation, the steady state X
p
( j ) must equal zero. Con-
sequently from Eq. 3, the ideal stiffness and damping of the SA
absorber are adjusted as
k
a
m
a

2
, c
a
0 (4)
Notice this tuned condition is only a function of the absorber
elements m
a
, k
a
, and c
a
. That is, the absorber tuning does not
need information from the primary system except the vibrating
frequency and hence its design is theoretically stand-alone. For
tonal application, ideally zero damping in the absorber subsection
results in improved performance, for the damped or undamped
primary structure. In practice, however, damping is incorporated
in order to maintain a reasonable trade-off between the absorber
mass and its displacement. Hence, the design effort for this class
of application is focused on having precise tuning of absorber to
the disturbance frequency and controlling damping to an appro-
priate level. Referring to Snowdon 14, it can be proven that the
absorber, in the presence of damping, can be most favorably
tuned if adjustable stiffness and damping are selected as
Fig. 1 Schematic of a force transmissibility for foundation isolation, b displacement trans-
missibility for protecting device from vibration of the base, and c application of vibration
absorber for suppressing primary system vibration
Fig. 2 A typical primary structure equipped with three versions of vibration-
control systems: a passive, b active, and c semi-active conguration
594 Vol. 124, OCTOBER 2002 Transactions of the ASME
k
opt

m
a
m
p
2

2
m
a
m
p

2
, c
opt
m
a

3k
opt
2 m
a
m
p

(5)
2.1.2 Broadband Excitation. In broadband vibration control,
the absorber subsection is generally designed to add damping to
and change the resonant characteristics of the primary structure in
order to maximally dissipate vibrational energy over a range of
frequencies. The objective of SA absorption system design is
therefore to adjust the absorber parameters to minimize the peak
magnitude of the frequency transfer function (FTF()
TF(s)
sj
) over the absorber variable suspension parameters
pc
a
k
a

T
. That is, we seek p to
min
p
sup

min

max
FFT (6)
Alternatively, one may select the mean square displacement re-
sponse MSDR of the primary system for vibration suppression
performance. That is, the absorber variable parameters vector p is
selected such that the MSDR
E x
p

FTF
2
S d (7)
is minimized over a desired wide band frequency range. S() is
the power spectral density of the excitation force f (t), and FTF
was dened earlier.
This optimization is subjected to some constraints in p space,
where only positive elements are acceptable. Once the optimal
absorber suspension properties, c
a
and k
a
, are determined, they
can be implemented using adjustment mechanisms on the spring
and the damper elements. The conceptual devices for such adjust-
able suspension elements will be discussed later in Section 3.
2.1.3 Simulations. To better demonstrate the effectiveness of
the SA absorber over the passive and optimum passive absorber
settings, the simple system shown in Fig. 3 with the following
nominal structural parameters marked by an overscore is taken.
m
p
5.77 kg, k

p
251.13210
6
N/m, c
p
197.92 kg/s
(8)
m
a
0.227 kg, k

a
9.8110
6
N/m, c
a
355.6 kg/s
These values are from an actual test setting for vibration control
of high-frequency disturbances in submarine hulls. As shown in
Fig. 4, the absorber is a piezoelectric actuator with reaction mass
where its operating frequencies are in the range of 60010,000 Hz
15,16. That is, the peak of FTF is minimized see thin lines in
Fig. 5. When the primary stiffness and damping increase 5% for
instance during the operation, the FTF of the primary system
deteriorates considerably dashed line in Fig. 5, and the absorber
is no longer an optimum one for the present primary. When the
absorber is optimized based on optimization problem 6, the re-
tuned setting is reached as
k
a
10.2910
6
N/m, c
a
364.2 kg/s (9)
which yields a much better frequency response see thick line in
Fig. 5.
2.2 Semi-Active Vibration Isolation Design. The param-
eter tuning control scheme for the SA isolator is similar to that of
the SA vibration absorber, with the only difference being in the
derivation of the transfer function. The classical isolator system
shown in Figs. 1a and 1b consists of a rigid body of mass m,
linear spring k and viscous damping c. Conversely to the vibration
absorber, the function of the isolator is to reduce the amplitude of
motion transmitted from a moving support to the body Fig. 1b,
or to reduce the magnitude of the force transmitted from the body
to the foundation to an acceptable level Fig. 1a.
The transfer functions between isolated mass displacement and
base displacementor transmitted force to foundation and exci-
tation forceare expressed as
F
T
F
0

X s
Y s

2
n
s
n
2
s
2
2
n
s
n
2
(10)
X s
F s

1/m
s
2
2
n
s
n
2
(11)
where c/2km is the damping ratio,
n
k/m is the natural
frequency, and F
T
is the amplitude of the transmitted force to the
foundation see Fig. 1a.
Figure 6 shows the transmissibility T
A
(T
A
F
T
/F
0
X/Y)
as a function of the frequency ratio /
n
and the damping ratio ,
where the low frequency range in which the mass displacement
essentially follows the base excitation, XY, is separated from
the high frequency range of isolation, XY. Near resonance, T
A
is controlled completely by the value of the damping ratio. A
fundamental problem is that while a high value of damping ratio
suppresses the resonance, it also compromises the isolation for
high frequency region (
n
). An optimal setting for isolator
can be obtained similar to optimum vibration absorber problem
6 except with the transfer function 10 17. The frequency
Fig. 3 Application of a semi-active absorber to SDOF primary
system with adjustable stiffness k
a
and damping c
a
Fig. 4 PCB series 712 PZT inertial actuator left, schematic of operation middle, and a simple
SDOF mathematical model right from 16
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 595
response plot of this transfer function shown in Fig. 7 indicates
that the damping values sufcient to control the resonance have
no adverse effect on high frequency isolation as opposed to Fig. 6.
An SA isolator can also be utilized for disturbances with time-
varying frequency. The variation of natural frequency which is a
function of suspension stiffness with the transmissibility T
A
, in
the absence of damping, is given as

n
T
A
/ 1T
A
, 0T
A
1 (12)
With variable disturbance frequency, , and desired transmissibil-
ity T
A
, the natural frequency
n
or the suspension stiffness k
can be changed in accordance with Eq. 12 to arrive at optimal
performance operation 18. The conceptual devices for adjustable
suspension elements are briey reviewed next.
Fig. 5 Frequency transfer functions FTF for nominal absorber thin-solid; de-tuned absorber thin-
dashed; and re-tuned absorber thick-solid settings from 15
Fig. 6 Frequency response plot of transmissibility T
A
for the semi-active isolator as a function of
variable damping ratio
596 Vol. 124, OCTOBER 2002 Transactions of the ASME
3 Adjustable Semi-Active Elements
Adjustable elements in semi-active vibration-control unit typi-
cally comprised of variable rate damper and stiffness. Signicant
efforts have been devoted to the development and implementation
of such devices for a variety of applications. Examples include
electro-rheological ER 19,20, magneto-rheological MR 21
uid dampers, variable orice dampers 22, controllable friction
braces 23, controllable friction isolators 24, and variable stiff-
ness devices including pneumatic isolators 9,2528.
3.1 Variable Rate Dampers. A common and very effective
way to reduce the transient and steady state vibration is to change
the amount of damping in the SA unit. Considerable design work
of semi-active damping has been done in the 60s through 80s 29,
and references therein for vibration control of civil structures
such as buildings and bridges 30. Since then, SA dampers have
been utilized in diverse applications ranging from trains 31,
military tanks and other off-road vehicles 32,33 to machine tool
oscillations 34. During recent years there has been considerable
interest in the SA concept in the industry for improvement and
renements of the concept 35. Recent advances in smart mate-
rials have led to the development of new SA dampers, which are
widely used in different applications.
In view of these SA dampers, the electro-rheological ER and
magneto-rheological MR uids probably serve as the best poten-
tial hardware alternatives for the more conventional variable-
orice hydraulic dampers 36,37. From a practical standpoint, the
MR concept appears more promising for suspension system since
it can operate, for instance, on vehicle battery voltage, whereas
the ER damper is based on high voltage electric elds 36,37.
Due to their importance in todays SA damper technology, we
briey review their operation and fundamental principles.
3.1.1 Electro-Rheological (ER) Fluid Dampers. Originally,
the idea of applying an ER damper to vibration control has been
initiated in automobile suspensions, followed by other applica-
tions 38,39. ER uids are materials which undergo signicant
instantaneous reversible changes in material characteristics when
subjected to electric potentials Fig. 8. The most signicant
change is associated with complex shear moduli of the material,
and hence ER uids can be usefully exploited in SA suspensions
where variable rate dampers are utilized.
The rheological property of ER uid is evaluated in shear mode
and under the electrical potential, the constitutive equation of an
ER uid damper has the form of Bingham plastic 40

y
E, and
y
EE

(13)
where is the shear stress, is the uid viscosity, is shear rate
and
y
(E) is yield stress of the ER uid which is a function of the
Fig. 7 Frequency response plot of transmissibility T
A
for optimum semi-active suspension as a func-
tion of variable damping ratio
Fig. 8 A schematic conguration of an ER damper from 19
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 597
electric eld E. The coefcients and are intrinsic values,
which are functions of particle size, concentration and polariza-
tion factors.
Consequently, the variable damping force in shear mode can be
obtained as
F
ER
4rL
d
/hE

sgn (14)
where h is the electrode gap, L
d
is the electrode length of the
moving cylinder, r is the mean radius of the moving cylinder, y is
the transverse velocity of the ER damper, and sgn() represents
signum function see Fig. 8. As a result, the ER uid damper
provides an adaptive viscous and frictional damping for use in an
SA system 20,41.
3.1.2 Magneto-Rheological (MR) Fluid Dampers. MR uids
are the magnetic analogs of ER uid and typically consist of
micron-sized, magnetically polarizable particles dispersed in a
carrier medium such as mineral or silicon oil. When a magnetic
eld is applied, particle chains form and the uid becomes a semi-
solid, exhibiting plastic behavior similar to that of ER uids Fig.
9. Transition to rheological equilibrium can be achieved in a few
milliseconds, providing devices with high bandwidth 21,42.
Similar to Bighams plasticity model of 13, the behavior of
controllable uid is represented by

y
H (15)
where H is the magnetic led. In a manner like ER dampers, the
variable force developed by an MR damper is direct-shear mode is
F
MR
A /h
y
HA (16)
where y is the relative pole velocity, ALw is the shear pole
area and the rest of the parameters are similar to those in ER
notations used in Eqs. 13 and 14.
3.2 Variable Rate Spring Elements. In contrast to variable
dampers, studies of SA springs or time-varying stiffness have
been also geared to vibration isolation applications, for structural
controls and vibration attenuation 2 and references therein. The
variable stiffness is a promising practical complement to SA
damping, since based on the discussion in Section 2 both the
suspension damping and stiffness should change to optimally
adopt to different conditions. Clearly, the stiffness has a signi-
cant inuence on optimum operation even more over the damp-
ing element 43.
Unlike the variable rate damper, changing the effective stiffness
requires high energy 25. Semi-active or low power implementa-
tion of variable stiffness techniques suffers from limited frequency
range, complex implementation and high cost 9,44. Therefore, in
practice both absorber damping and stiffness are concurrently ad-
justed to reduce the required energy.
3.2.1 Variable Rate Stiffness (Direct Methods). The primary
objective here is to directly change the spring stiffness to optimize
a vibration suppression characteristic such as given in Eqs. 6 or
7. Different techniques can be utilized ranging from traditional
variable leaf spring to smart spring utilizing magnetostrictive ma-
terials. A tunable stiffness vibration absorber was utilized for a
4-DOF building Fig. 10, where a spring is threaded through a
collar plate and attached to the absorber mass from one side and to
the driving gear from the other side 44. Thus, the effective num-
ber of active coils, N, can be changed resulting in a variable spring
stiffness k
a
k
a

d
4
G
8D
3
N
(17)
where d is the spring wire diameter, D is the mean spring coil
diameter and G is modulus of shear rigidity.
3.2.2 Variable Rate Effective Stiffness (Indirect Methods). In
most SA applications, directly changing the stiffness might not be
always possible or may require a large amount of control effort.
For such cases, alternatives methods are utilized to change the
effective tuning ratio (k
a
/m
a
/
n1
), thus resulting in a tun-
able resonance frequency
nl
is the fundamental natural fre-
quency of the primary system.
In Liu 45, a semi-active utter suppression scheme was pro-
posed using differential changes of external store stiffness. As
Fig. 9 A schematic conguration of an MR damper
Fig. 10 The application of a variable stiffness vibration ab-
sorber to a 4DOF building from 44
598 Vol. 124, OCTOBER 2002 Transactions of the ASME
shown in Fig. 11, the motor drives the guide screw to rotate with
slide block G moving along it, thus changing the restoring mo-
ment and resulting in a change of store pitching stiffness. Using a
double ended cantilever beam carrying intermediate lumped
masses, a semi-active vibration absorber was recently introduced
in 46, where the position of moving masses was adjustable see
Fig. 12. Figure 13 shows a SA absorber with an adjustable effec-
tive inertia mechanism 47. The SA absorber consists of a rod
carrying a moving block and a spring and damper which are
mounted on a casing. The position of the moving block, r

,
on the rod is adjustable which provides a tunable resonance
frequency.
3.3 Other Variable Rate Elements. Recent advances in
smart materials have led to the development of new SA vibration-
control systems using indirect inuence on the suspension ele-
ments. Asemi-active piezoelectric network was utilized in 13 for
structural vibration control see Fig. 14. The variable resistance
and inductance in an external RL circuit are used as real-time
adaptable control parameters.
Another class of adjustable vibration-control systems is the so-
called hybrid treatment 48. The hybrid design has two modes: an
active mode and a passive mode. With the aim of lowering the
control effort, relatively small vibrations are reduced in active
mode, while passive mode is used for large oscillations. Analo-
gous to hybrid treatment, semi-automated approach combines the
semi-active and active congurations to benet from the advan-
tages of individual schemes while eliminating their shortfalls 49.
By altering the adjustable structural properties in semi-active
Fig. 12 A typical primary system equipped with the double-
ended cantilever absorber with adjustable tuning ratio through
moving masses m from 46.
Fig. 11 A semi-active utter control using adjustable pitching stiffness
from 45
Fig. 13 Schematic of the adjustable effective inertia vibration absorber from 47
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 599
unit and control parameters in active unit, a search is conducted
to minimize an objective function subject to certain constraints,
which may reect performance characteristics.
4 Automotive Semi-Active Suspensions
Earlier studies on SA vibration-control systems have been fo-
cused on automobile related application. One noticeable reason is
that the importance of energy dissipation in vibration-control sys-
tems is recognized most in automotive suspensions, where ride
comfort and vehicle handling are encountered. For this reason, we
briey review the application of SA systems to automotive sus-
pension and present some recent developments in this area.
4.1 An Overview of Automotive Suspensions. Advanced
vehicle suspension systems such as adaptive, semi-active, and ac-
tive have extensively been used in most conventional ground
transport eets. Due to slow response time in adaptive systems
and high energy consumption and cost in active suspensions, they
are unlikely to survive in the future market 5052.
Due to large forces and velocities involved in suspension sys-
tems, it is important to minimize the actuator power requirement
for practical and economical reasons. For the actuator in the semi-
active suspension systems, multi-stage dampers and continuously
variable dampers, or variable lever ratio systems and modulated
transformers are being utilized 29. These suspensions are called
low bandwidth or fast load lever systems and often incorpo-
rate semi-active dampers which produce high frequency control-
lable forces with low power requirements.
In vehicle suspensions, physical actuator limitations or cost
considerations may render an elegant design concept totally im-
practical. For this reason, there has been interest in exploring the
possibility of improving suspension performance by modulating
the characteristics of essentially passive elements such as springs
and dampers. SA suspensions represent a compromise between
performance improvement and simplicity of implementation.
4.2 Vehicle Models. The vehicle models range from the
simplest one as a single DOF quarter car model which allows for
only one-dimensional vertical or heave motion, to a very complex
with many DOF 5255. A quarter car model considers only one
wheel and sprung mass bounce motion in the vertical direction.
For this model, more DOFs other than the basic two degrees of
freedom could be considered. However, each mass will only have
DOF in the vertical direction, and pitch and roll are neglected see
Fig. 15a. The next category of model incorporates the vertical
oscillation of the vehicle as well as the pitch of the vehicle body
see Fig. 15b. This is often referred to as a half-car or bicycle
model 58. The next modeling option incorporates heave, pitch
and roll as shown in Fig. 15c.
While these models are relatively simple, making use of
lumped mass and linear spring characteristics, they will still pro-
vide a reasonably accurate indication of vehicle behavior under
normal operating conditions. To illustrate the theoretical concepts
and avoid disturbing the focus of the subject, we briey discuss,
using a simple quarter car SQC model of Fig. 15a what may be
achieved by linear damping and spring stiffness variations. Al-
though this is a simple model, it is quite suitable to study the
performance of a vehicle suspension in both the bounce motion
and tire deection 56.
The governing equations of motion for the sprung and unsprung
masses are:
m
1
z
1
z
1
z
2
b z
1
z
2
0
(18)
m
2
z
2
z
2
z
1
b z
2
z
1
k
2
z
2
z
0
0
where m
1
is a quarter of the body mass sprung, m
2
is the mass
of the wheel, b and are the adjustable damping and stiffness of
the suspension, and the rest of the parameters are dened in Fig.
15a.
Figure 16 shows such adjustable damper whereby the check
valves assure that for both directions of piston motion, the hydrau-
lic uid ows the same way through a solenoid controlled blow-
off valve thus resulting in a variable damping 57. In order to
demonstrate the effect of suspension element variations on the
ride comfort, the frequency response of body velocity as a mea-
sure of ride comfort is shown in Fig. 17. These adjustable damper
and stiffness are optimized with respect to ride comfort and sus-
pension rattle space. A performance characteristic is then con-
structed to perform this optimization.
4.3 Semi-Active Suspension Performance Characteristics.
It is important to recognize that automobile suspension must per-
form several tasks in addition to isolating body from vibration
induced by road unevenness 51. The vehicle body bounce, atti-
tude of each wheel with respect to road surface, normal force
variations at each wheel and many other criteria must be con-
trolled. Although the focus here is on vibration isolation of sus-
pension systems, a good design should allow for meeting several
conicting requirements as explained next.
An optimal SA control problem is therefore formulated for the
SQC model of Fig. 15 to briey highlight the design procedure.
For the performance index PI in the design of vehicle suspen-
sion, sprung mass acceleration, suspension travel, and tire spring
excursion can be incorporated. Sprung mass acceleration is a mea-
sure of body isolation, i.e., passenger ride comfort. Suspension
travel or rattle space is typically a design constraint for limiting
rigid body motion of the vehicle. Tire spring stroke or equiva-
lently dynamic tire force is an indicator of road holding ability.
Accordingly, a PI of the following form can be selected.
PI
1
2T
E z
0

0
T

1
z
1
2

2
z
2
z
0

3
z
2
z
1

2
dt
(19)
where E(z
0
) denotes the expectations of the random road distur-
bance input z
0
, T is a sufcient large endtime,
1
,
2
, and
3
are
weighting factors for the penalized variables.
Given the linear system described by Eq. 18, a control se-
quence U(t) can be chosen to minimize the PI given in Eq. 19,
under the passivity constraint 10
U t z
1
t z
2
t 0, 0tT (20)
In addition, since the vehicle structure can tolerate only bounded
suspension forces it is required that
U t U
M
, 0tT (21)
where U
M
0 is the maximal allowed force. There are many exact
numerical and approximate analytical solutions to this problem
which we leave the details to 10,5758. To illustrate the effect
of variable suspension damper b in Fig. 15, the dependence of
SA performance index on
2
(b/2k
1
m
1
) is shown in Fig. 18.
Fig. 14 Schematic of a cantilever beam with SA piezoelectric
RL network from 13
600 Vol. 124, OCTOBER 2002 Transactions of the ASME
4.4 Brief Overview of Recent Advances in Automotive
Semi-Active Suspensions. The SA concept has been applied to
a broad class of ground transport eets, ranging from tractors and
other farm vehicles to high-speed ground transportation vehicle.
The SA suspension concept goes back to the early 1970s in the
form of variable, controllable damping 59. Although the focus
here is on vibration isolation through vehicle suspension design, it
might be worthwhile mentioning that there have been a few ap-
plications of vibration absorber with the aim of improving ride
comfort as shown in Fig. 19 60.
Some recent developments include: SA suspension with vari-
able stiffness 61, electro-hydro-pneumatic slow-active suspen-
Fig. 15 a A SQC model of vehicle suspension system b half car model
incorporating the body pitch from 58, and c whole car model with heave,
pitch, and roll motions from 58
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 601
sion 62, SA suspension using ER uid mount 63, fast load
lever suspension with variable lever rate 64, SA gas suspension
for off-road vehicles 32, SA suspension for passenger trains
31, and SA suspension using piston controlled disk valve 22.
5 Application of Control Techniques to Semi-Active
Suspensions
As discussed in the preceding sections, the SA suspension gen-
erates forces passively but these forces are modulated continu-
ously in accordance with some prescribed control law with only a
small amount of external power. In other words, the SA suspen-
sion is basically a device with time varying controllable damping
and spring.
The concept of SA control was rst introduced by Karnopp in
1974 29, and has since been developed and demonstrated to be a
viable suspension alternative. Although not rigorously proven,
damper and stiffness can be treated much like active force gen-
erators for the purpose of controller design. That is, the SA
damper or spring is modulated according to the same control
policy and same sate measurement as its fully active force gen-
erator counterpart. This section briey reviews the control tech-
niques for SA suspensions.
5.1 Semi-Active Control Concept. The elementary SA
controller design is the so-called on-off SA strategy, which was
rst proposed in 65. It switches the damper off whenever sprung
and unsprung masses move in the same direction and unsprung
mass has a larger velocity. In any other situations the damper is set
to the ON state. The schematic of the conceptual control law is
shown in Fig. 20.
A somewhat more sophisticated approach is to change the
damping from soft to rm and vice versa through a manual or
slow adaptive control. This is referred to as on-off skyhook
Fig. 16 Schematic design of the electro-hydraulic valve in the
piston of a semi-active damper from 57
Fig. 17 Variations in frequency response of body velocity for
SQC model with variable damper from 17
Fig. 18 Variation of normalized PI as a function of variable
suspension damping ratio from 10
Fig. 19 A 2DOF vehicle model with dynamic vibration
absorber
602 Vol. 124, OCTOBER 2002 Transactions of the ASME
control policy, whereby the damper is congured as shown in Fig.
21. Mathematically, the on-off skyhook control policy can be de-
scribed as
z
1
z
1
z
2
0, chigh damping
(22)
z
1
z
1
z
2
0, clow damping
The combination of relative velocity damping forces and sky-
hook components is very effective in damping the body response
without detrimental effects refer to Fig. 17 on isolation for the
frequencies between the body resonance frequency and the wheel
hop frequency 10. The frequency response is demonstrated in
Fig. 22, where signicant improvement is attained over the con-
ventional variable damping conguration of Fig. 17.
During recent years there has been considerable interest in the
on-off SA concept. Further improvements and renements of the
concept were reported 52 and references therein. Recent devel-
opments in multi-variable control design methodology and micro-
processor implementation of modern control algorithms have
opened a new era for the design of externally controlled passive
systems for use in SA suspensions.
5.2 Optimal Semi-Active Suspension. The continuously-
variable SA policy represents the next step up in the sophistica-
tion. It requires that the SA actuator continuously reproduce a
linear quadratic LQ optimal control skyhook damping force
whenever this is possible in view of the passivity constraint 10.
When this is not possible, the damper is simply turned off. The
continuously-variable SA policy was subsequently extended to
more complex model, which led to so-called clipped SAcontrol
52. The optimal SA control law was rst studied in 66. It was
later proved that the clipped SA policy may often be very close to
being optimal but not always 10.
The fundamental concepts in optimum SA are similar to opti-
mum automotive suspension systems discussed in Section 4.3.
Simple, mostly LQ-based optimal control concepts give useful
insights about the performance characteristics and other require-
ments 52,66.
-
Fig. 20 On-off semi-active control decision
Fig. 21 Schematic of Skyhook damper arrangement
Fig. 22 Variations in frequency response of body velocity for SQC model with combination of variable damper and skyhook
damping from 17
Journal of Vibration and Acoustics OCTOBER 2002, Vol. 124 603
5.3 Other Control Techniques. As a result of the substan-
tial ongoing theoretical advances in the areas of adaptive and non-
linear controls 67, it is expected that the future will bring appli-
cations of these techniques in advanced suspension design. For
practical implementation, however, it is preferable to simplify
these strategies thus leading to simpler software implementations.
For instance, suboptimal policy neglecting some performance re-
quirements can serve as example of such simplications. Some
recent developments in control techniques for SA suspensions in-
clude: fuzzy reasoning, adaptive SA, SA suspension with observer
design and many others 50 and references therein.
6 Conclusions
The fundamental principles of SA suspension were formulated
here. There are many important areas directly or indirectly related
to the main theme of this paper such as practical implementation
of SA suspensions, nonlinear control schemes, actual hardware
implementation, actuator bandwidth requirements, reliability and
cost. Furthermore, in the process of designing a SA suspension, in
practice, several critical criteria must be considered, which were
not discussed here. These include weight, size, shape, center-of-
gravity, types of dynamic disturbances, allowable system re-
sponse, ambient environment and service life.
SA suspensions provide vibration suppression solutions for
tonal and broadband applications with small amount of control
and relatively low cost. However, it is quite a design challenge by
using conventional technologies to build a practical SA suspen-
sion under the constraints of weight, size and cost. Furthermore,
the design of SA suspension involves many mechanical and elec-
trical components that puts limit on the tuning range of the reso-
nance frequency of the device.
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