Fault-tolerant semi-active suspension control for degradation in damper performance

Several types of dampers are used in the suspension systems of road vehicles, while the magneto-rheological damper is one of the most efficient solutions to manage the balance between objectives of vehicle suspension control. Various types of failures may occur in magneto-rheological dampers, and these faults may affect adversely the operation of the vehicle suspension system. This paper is concerned with the design of semi-active suspension control with fault-tolerant control reconfiguration through the Linear Parameter-Varying control method. In case of a damper oil leakage affecting the damper force, the proposed control strategy calculates feasible damper forces for the healthy dampers in order to compensate for the lost force of the faulty damper. Unlike other approaches in the literature, this method aims to enhance performances by modifying the force of a healthy damper to the same level as the force of a faulty damper. The simulation has been performed in the TruckSim environment to demonstrate the operation of the proposed fault-tolerant control strategy. The results show that the introduced novel reconfiguration control method improved driving comfort, road holding and vehicle stability.