Active and Semi-Active

Vibration Isolation

D. Karnopp
Department of Mechanical
and Aeronautical Engineering,
University of California, Davis,
Davis, CA 95616

In the five decades since the founding of the ASME Design Engineering Division, the
important problem of vibration isolation has been attacked first through the design of
passive spring-damper suspensions and later by the use of active and semi-active
elements. This paper reviews the historical development of theoretical concepts
necessary for the design of isolation systems and indicates how control theory began to
influence vibration isolation in the last half of this period. Practical active and
semi-active suspensions have only recently become possible with the advent of powerful
but relatively inexpensive signal processors. To illustrate these developments for
engineers who have not been intimately involved with active systems, only simple
vibrational system models will be discussed, although some modern hardware will be
shown which is now being applied to complex systems. Instead of attempting to review
the many theoretical concepts which have been proposed for active systems, this article
will focus on a relatively simple idea with which the author has been associated over the
past thirty years; namely the "skyhook" damper. This idea came through purely
theoretical studies but is now used in combination with other concepts in production
suspension systems. Two quite different application areas will be discussed. The first
involves stable platforms to provide extreme isolation for delicate manufacturing
operations against seismic inputs and the second involves automotive suspensions.
Although similar concepts are found in these two application areas, the widely varying
requirements result in very different suspension hardware. The special case of the
semi-active damper, which requires very little control power and is presently reaching
production, will also be discussed.

Introduction
The theory of vibrations is a triumph of classical analytical
mechanics. Whittaker (1904) traces the development of this
theory from the study of small oscillations of a pendulum by
Galileo through major contributions by Brook Taylor,
D'Alembert, Euler and Daniel Bernoulli who in 1753 showed
that compound vibrations could be resolved into motions of
independent simple modes. Lagrange provided a general
theory of the vibration of systems with finite degrees-of-freedom in 1762-5.
In the face of this theoretical understanding, a mathematical physicist might be excused for thinking that the job of
engineering practical control measures to ameliorate the
undesirable effects of vibration would be relatively trivial. In
fact, apart from the usual problems associated with cost,
reliability, and manufacturability, engineers initially were
prevented from designing effective vibration isolation schemes
by a lack of education in the field. It has been pointed out
(Den Hartog, 1947) that prior to the middle 1930's, "the
subject had not yet been introduced into the curriculum of
our technical schools." Den Hartog, having been trained as
an electrical engineer and familiar with the techniques used

Contributed by the Design Engineering Division for publication in the

Special 50th Anniversary Design Issue. Manuscript received Oct. 1994.
Technical Editor: D. J. Inman.

to describe alternating current electrical circuits, was a pioneer in introducing mechanical engineers to vibration control
means.
In the early days of vibration isolation, the emphasis was
on the balancing of rotating machinery and the introduction
of compliant suspension elements. Most of the time, spring
rates for suspensions were chosen to avoid resonant response
but in some cases the basic concepts were surprisingly vague.
Den Hartog himself (Den Hartog, 1947, p. 149) answers his
own question, " . . . how do we have to design the main
springs [of an automobile] for maximum riding comfort... ?
with the answer, "the springs have to be made as soft as
possible... ." Since there was no discussion of any real
limitations to the softness of suspension springs, it seems that
design guides for isolation systems were not very well developed at this time.
The importance of energy dissipation in suspension systems was recognized early on but it was often not clear how
much damping was desirable and, for that matter, there were
few damping devices which produced the viscous type of
damping forces assumed by the linear theory of vibrations.
The relatively few special cases treatable by the mathematical theory of nonlinear oscillations provided little help for
practical vibration control and computers capable of simulating nonlinear systems were not readily available until fairly
recently. In many cases, what damping did exist came from
JUNE 1995, Vol. 117/177

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sliding friction in linkages, bearings, or leaf springs or was

inherent in visco-elastic materials used. After the second
world war, hydraulic shock absorbers became common in
vehicle suspensions but the amount and type of damping to
be installed was decided more by trial and error than by any
unified theory. Den Hartog's advice on the matter is typical:
"The introduction of damping at these high road frequencies
is undesirable. But the case of resonance is not excluded,
and, from that standpoint, damping is very desirable." He
goes on to discuss the difficulties of deciding on the proper
amount of damping considering the wide variety of roadway
disturbances which may be encountered but more than a few
general words of advice to a suspension designer are not to
be found.
By the time of the late 1950's and early 1960's random
vibration had become a research topic due primarily to
problems associated with rough burning of rocket engines
and fatigue of aircraft parts due to turbulence excited vibration. By this time most mechanical engineers had some
exposure to sinusoidally excited vibration in their basic education and courses in random vibration were being introduced at the graduate level. An ASME Research Committee
on Random Vibration formulated a program in 1959 to
standardize and extend the techniques associated with noise
in electronic communication networks to mechanical systems
resulting in a monograph (Crandall, Mark, 1963). Since natural frequency tuning is not effective for broadband random
disturbances, the advent of random vibration analysis focussed designers on finding the best set of spring and damping rates for specific problems often by minimizing mean
square response quantities. At about this time, optimal control techniques were being developed and applied and there
began to be a clear convergence of ideas about techniques to
optimize the dynamics of control systems and mechanical
vibrational systems (Karnopp and Trikha, 1969).
Although designers of vibration control systems began to
use the same types of mathematics to describe their problems
as control system designers, there remained an important
difference. It was almost universally assumed in the vibration
community that only passive devices such as springs, dampers
or extra masses would be used to design isolation systems
while control engineers almost always thought of active actuating devices responding to sensed variables for their systems. During the decade of the 1960's the ideas of active
control for vibration isolation began to be widely proposed
but the widespread practical implementation of these concepts has only recently become practical.
Below, two specific areas of application of active and
semi-active suspensions will be discussed in which one common concept has played a role and in which commercial
products have been designed and put into production. The
first area involves seismic isolation platforms for sensitive
experiments or for manufacturing processes requiring extremely low levels of vibration. The second involves automotive suspensions which are subject to large and unpredictable
roadway disturbances and maneuvering loads. The concept is
the so-called "skyhook damper" which has been realized as
part of a variety of active and semi-active isolation schemes.
It is of interest that although common concepts may appear
in two different applications of vibration isolation, entirely
different actuator, sensor and signal processing hardware
may be dictated by different excitation and response requirements.
2

Basic Ideas of Active Vibration Isolation

It is not possible here to review the many hundreds of
contributions to active vibration isolation over the past 50
years. See ElBeheiry et al. (1994) and Hrovat (1993) for two
recent extensive bibliographies. Early examples of active sus-

178/ Vol. 117, JUNE 1995

Moving Base
Fig. 1

Single degree-of-freedom active vibration isolator

RECEIVER
VIBRATION

INPUT
VIBRATION

OPTIMUM
TRANSFER
FUNCTION
i

W (S)

Bta f

gun

'f-

'

"' i

RELATIVE
EXCURSION

IM/Y\
J

k-f

<?

Fig. 2 Block diagram for Wiener filter design of active isolator

pensions in the 1950's and 60's tended to be concerned with

specific hardware for the actuators and sensors, and controller signal processing was severely limited (FederspielLabrosse, 1954, 1955; Olson and Allen, 1965; Smith and
Lum, 1968; Leatherwood and Dixon, 1968). Here we concentrate on general studies of the theory of vibration isolation
including active control forces which only later resulted in
practical applications.
In the middle 1960's, the present author and a graduate
student embarked on a research project attempting to apply
the contemporary optimal control concepts to vehicle suspensions (Bender, 1967a,b; Bender, Karnopp and Paul, 1967).
(This was part of a federal government sponsored program
intended to revolutionize ground transportation.) The simplest possible vehicle suspension model is shown in Fig. 1
where V0 represents the vertical velocity due to roadway
unevenness and the V is the velocity of the suspended mass.
The innovation in the isolator conceptual design was to make
no presumption about how the suspension forces were to be
generated. The technique used to formulate an optimal system was based on the so-called Wiener filter which could, for
example, find the transfer function between V and V0 which
would minimize a weighted sum of mean square acceleration
of the isolated mass and a mean square relative excursion or
rattle space between the mass and the base for random base
excitation. Figure 2 shows a block diagram used in setting up
the Wiener filter process. A Wiener filter solution produces
the optimal closed loop transfer function. State space techniques, which were developed subsequently, solve the same
problem by producing a set of feedback gains relating the
active force to the system state variables.
The classical textbook isolator system shown in Fig. 3 has
the following well known transfer functions if the spring and
damper are considered to be linear:
2a>s + co2

V _
V0

s2 + 2ltoBs + a>l

(1)

s/m
2

~F ~ s + 2l<oms + (o2

(2)

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10.0

f\

f Y

'

-C-0.1
-

0.Z5

0.5

- 0.707(opt1mai;
-1.0
.,

1.0

""s ~ X T T 1

< \A\

v/v|
Fig. 3 Conventional passive isolator

10.0

ja
\

0.1

V
i

IA

SfKc
S

\8

"/ 1
1.0

0.01

Y^,S.

0.1

s\ s

Ml

1.0

u/u)

10.0

Fig. 5 Frequency response for the optimal active isolator

V

C=1.0

+ 2cons + u>l

(3)

0.707-

where was always y2 / 2 but wn depended upon the weighting factor between mean square acceleration and mean square
rattle space in the criterion function used for optimization.
The frequency response plot of this transfer function shown
"
0.25 in Fig. 5 shows that damping values sufficient to control the
/
resonance have no adverse effect on high frequency isolation.
U. 1
The curve for the optimum damping ratio of = 0.707 in
0 0
Fig. 5 shows that the optimum isolator forms an ideal low-pass
/
filter with a cut off frequency of wn. Strictly speaking, the
result is valid only for a white-noise velocity input, but
intuitively one can imagine that low frequency input components of V0 must be followed by V in order to minimize the
0.001
I-W
lr-. . .
mean square relative deflection of the isolator while at high
0.1
1.0
10.0
frequencies the isolator should apply only small forces to
ia/u>
minimize mean square acceleration of the isolated mass.
Fig. 4 Frequency response plot for passive isolator
Thus the response of V falls off sharply for frequencies
greater than con.
Clearly, a resonant peak is undesirable so it seems logical
where 5 is the Laplace transform variable, f is the damping that f should be greater than about 0.5, but too high a value
ratio, con is the natural circular frequency and m is the mass. for I effectively lowers the response near a>/wn = 1.0, inFigure 4 is a frequency response plot from Eq. (1) showing creasing deflection without changing the degree of isolation
that con divides the low frequency range in which the mass for o)/(i>n 1.0. The optimum filter has just enough damping
velocity essentially follows the base velocity, V =V0, from the to provide a sharp low pass filter response with no resonance
high frequency range of isolation, V < V0. A fundamental peak, and the tradeoff between suspension deflection and
problem is that while a high value of damping ratio sup- acceleration is adjusted entirely by changing the undamped
presses the resonancewhich is goodit also comprises the natural frequency coir
isolation for co > u>n. (This is the fundamental problem Den
The important point is that the passive isolator system
Hartog referred to in the quote about damping in automobile represented by Eq. (1) and Fig. 4 is considerably different
suspensions cited in the introduction.)
from the optimum active isolator system represented by Eq.
When the Wiener filter technique was applied, it was (2) and Fig. 5. No parameter set for the passive system can
found that the optimal transfer function for the active isola- result in an optimum system. The fundamental reason is that
tor corresponding to Eq. (1) for the passive isolator became: the placement of the damper in Fig. 3 results in high forces
0.1

>

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^^v

V,

Fig. 6 A skyhook damper system and a partially active system

incorporating a spring

transmitted from the base to the isolated mass for input

components at frequencies well above the natural frequency.
This effect cannot be mitigated for a passive system by
reducing the damping since then undesirable resonant response occurs for input components near the natural frequency.
Although the original idea was to generate any force
necessary using some form of actuator as shown in Fig. 1, it
soon became apparent that an "almost passive" system as
shown in Fig. 6 could be arranged to have the optimal
transfer function. The problem with the conventional passive
system of Fig. 3 was that the damper was in the wrong place,
producing a force related to the relative velocity between the
mass and the base rather than a force related to the absolute
mass velocity. In many cases, and certainly for most vehicles,
there is simply no place to attach the end of a physical
damper which should have zero inertial velocity. We therefore called the configuration on the right side of Fig. 6 a
"skyhook damper" system. The actuator produces a force Fc
equivalent to the force a physical damper connected to
ground would produce. Although the skyhook damper concept was derived originally only for a single degree-of-freedom system with a white noise input, isolators applying forces
or moments to inertia elements related to their absolute
linear and angular velocities by active or semi-active means
are still often referred to as skyhook damper systems.
When state space techniques became better known, the
Wiener filter approach was largely supplanted by state variable feedback methods. One could then see that for the
single degree-of-freedom case, the spring and skyhook
damper were providing forces proportional to two state variables (Karnopp, 1973). The Wiener filter does, however, have
an interesting advantage since it applies to more than finite
state systems. For example, if vehicles travel along guideways
which can be sensed ahead of the vehicle, a preview effect is
possible and its benefit can be assessed. Figure 7 (Bender,
1968) shows optimal trade-off curves for active suspensions
with zero and infinite preview as well as an approximate
realization using a skyhook damper, a "real" spring of constant kv and an active component which could be realized by
a spring of constant ks reacting to the roadway ahead of the
vehicle. There was a proposal to achieve the effect of preview
using sensed signals throughout a long train (Karnopp, 1968)
and attempts to use roadway information sensed ahead of
vehicles have continued to the present day.
Although studies of active and semi-active suspensions
have gone far beyond the simple single degree-of-freedom
discussed above, it is notable that the idea of the skyhook
damper force reappears over and over again in isolation
control strategies as engineers search for simple and effective
means for vibration control with passive and active elements.
180/ Vol. 117, JUNE 1995

0.04 0.06 0.1

0.2
0.4 0.6 08 10
20 30
VEHICLE-ROADWAY RELATIVE DISPLACEMENT
(SEC1"^)
\JZ r AV
Fig. 7 Vibration clearance trade-off for simple preview suspension
for several values of preview time, T (seconds) (Bender, 1968)

We next discuss two areas in which active control ideas have

resulted in viable products. In both cases, the idea of absolute velocity feedback has played an important although
certainly not exclusive role.
3

Seismic Isolation Platforms

Certain instruments and manufacturing systems are extremely sensitive to vibration and must be isolated from
micro-seismic base motion. Typically such devices are
mounted on massive blocks supported on soft suspensions.
Because of the extreme levels of isolation required many
practical difficulties arise in the design of the suspension
elements. Limitations to isolation may be due to "spring
surge," (the modal response of low spring constant steel
springs), or due to small amounts of dry friction in the
suspension. A partially active type of suspension involving
self-leveling pneumatic isolators has been used since the
1960's (Kunica, 1965).
Damping of the type represented in Figs. 3 and 4 is not
desirable and, since the relative motion between the isolated
block and the support is small and the forces must also be
small, it is quite feasible to consider applying active forces
using voice-coil electromagnetic actuators to generate the
force Fc shown in Fig. 6. While various types of sensors and
control loop compensation schemes have been used (Brodersen, 1974), it is interesting that a commercial system, the
Electrodamp Active Vibration Control System (Anon, 1994c)
uses as sensors geophones which, above a natural frequency,
produce a signal proportional to the absolute velocity of the
isolated mass. Thus, in simple terms, a geophone, a proportional amplifier and an electrodynamic actuator provide an
active skyhook damper system. A recent patent (Schubert,
1992) uses this scheme with an electronic circuit to extend
the geophone's ability to sense velocity below its mechanical
natural frequency and this type of system has been available
for a number of years in the Electrodamp product (see Fig.
8). Another system, the Neutralizer (Anon, 1993) also uses
voice coil actuators, geophones, and pneumatic spring elements to support a block and to provide isolation in up to six
degrees-of-freedom using active force control.
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PAYLOAD MASS M
,X4m_ i

, ,

gjr8'
j

l r

^ ^

y a y

76 .

*-

I g^

13
_

f-;^22

21 T1 K F u i

HL

*IN
f

l >

,f

SOUT
t

"-yyTTrr-r-r-

JguL
Fig. 10 Schematic diagram of an active suspension constructed
by Federspiel-Labrosse in 1954

Fig. 8 Schematic diagram of an active isolator (Schubert, 1992).

Upper figure indicates a velocity sensor (21), a compensation circuit to extend the sensor frequency response (22 and middle figure) and a voice coil force actuator (15 and bottom figure).

-=^_

-==1

m ,

_f

to incorporate an "inertial damping" or skyhook damping

effect for the isolated mass by means of an outer control
loop. It is shown in Beard et al. (1994) that "Measuring
passive mount load or deflection, the inertially damped transmissibility of [Fig. 5] is realizable." Thus although this system
uses a piezoelectric deflection actuator, it can be arranged to
yield the same type of transfer function as a skyhook damper
system.
In this application area, the physical requirements for
relatively small forces and deflections are such that electromechanical actuators of the voice-coil or piezoelectric type
can be used and forces can be exerted directly on the moving
ground as in Fig. 6. Problems arise mainly with the sensors
and the control scheme. In the next application area the
practical problems are associated more with the actuators
and their power requirements and the actuators can only
exert forces between two masses in the system and not on the
moving ground itself. In this case the isolation problem is
considerably more complex, but even here there is validity to
the skyhook damper concept of inertial velocity feedback.
4

_J ..
Fig. 9 A "hard mount" active isolator (Beard, Schubert and von
Flotow, 1994)

Although the skyhook damper scheme essentially changes

the transfer function of Eq. (1) to the more desirable transfer
function of Eq. (3) it leaves the transfer function due to'force
disturbances of Eq. (2) unchanged. In some cases force
disturbances on the mounting block or coupling to vibration
modes of the equipment mounted on the block may degrade
the isolation system performance and require complex tuning
of the feedback paths to the actuators.
A proposed solution to the problem of force disturbance
rejection using a "hard mount" concept is shown in Fig. 9
(Beard et al., 1994). In this system a stiff piezoelectric actuator supports an intermediate mass, m,, on which a conventional passive suspension rests supporting the isolated mass,
mp. In this scheme, the passive suspension is stiffer than the
pneumatic springs used in the two active systems discussed
above thus rejecting force disturbances better but only providing isolation at relatively high frequencies. Feedback control of the piezoelectric actuator which basically controls the
deflection 5C in Fig. 9, reduces the motion of m, to provide
isolation at low frequencies. Interestingly enough, even for
this very different active suspension it is found advantageous

Special 50th Anniversary Design Issue

Automotive Active Suspensions

The term "active suspension" is probably associated today
mainly with automobile suspensions and, indeed, interest in
active vehicle suspensions goes back some 40 years
(Federspiel-Labrosse, 1954, 1955). Figure 10 shows a
schematic diagram of his system which was built and tested
on the famous French car, the Citroen 2CV. His hydraulic
system had valves controlled by a pendulum and was apparently inspired by his early work on television amplifiers.
Other attempts at active suspensions also tended to used
inertia effects both to sense acceleration and to actuate
hydraulic valves (Obson and Allen, 1965).
There was a considerable time lag between the early active
suspension systems using no electronics and the surge of
prototype and limited production systems which began to
appear in the 1980's. Toyota had a system for its Soarer in
1983 (Yokoya et al., 1984) and Group Lotus Car Companies
attained a well known patent in 1984 (Williams and Wright,
1984). Lotus was an advocate of high bandwidth active suspensions and they have been particularly active in racing cars
(Wright and Williams, 1989).
It was apparent by the 1980's that electronic sensors and
computers had reached a state such that sophisticated suspension systems were at least possible but the question of
which type of actuator to use was vexing. Automotive suspensions deal with large forces, velocities, and deflections and
there are questions about how to generate forces efficiently,
reliably, and at acceptable financial and energy costs.
By the 1990's there were commercially available automotive active suspensions. Figure 11 shows a typical pressure

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Skyhook damper

Manosuvering
loads ,

I Manosuvering
I loads

Broadband
actuator

Roadway disturbances

mi

Control

Roadway disturbances

Fig. 12 Two contrasting versions of active suspensions (Karnopp

and Heess. 1991)

Equivalent Model

Propagation Character.siics

Fig. 11 Schematic diagram of electrohydraulic pressure control

system (Hkatsu et al., 1990)

FN
Frequency

Rood Surface

controlled strut actuator available on Toyota and Nissan

vehicles in Japan and other countries (Yokoya et al., 1990;
Akatsu et al., 1990). Such systems had some clear advantages
over passive suspensions but also some disadvantages. A 1991
Nissan Infinity with active suspension when compared to the
same car with a passive suspension cost more ($5500), weighed
more (202 lbs.) and the suspension absorbed three to five
horsepower. The result was a decrease in fuel economy from
16/22 city/highway mpg estimates to 14/19 (Cere, 1991).
It is important to recognize that automobile suspensions
must perform several tasks in addition to isolating the body
from vibrations induced by roadway unevenness (Karnopp
and Heess, 1991). The body attitude must be controlled
against maneuvering loads from cornering, braking and accelerating and the attitude of each wheel with respect to the
road surface (in particular the camber angle) must be controlled by the suspension. Furthermore, it is desirable to limit
the dynamic normal force variations at each wheel to aid in
longitudinal and lateral force generation by the tires and to
limit the suspension deflection. Many of these requirements
lead to design conflicts which can only be imperfectly resolved with passive suspensions. Sports cars tends to have
stiff, harsh suspensions with poor ride quality while luxury
limousines may have a smooth ride on straight roads but
poorly controlled body motions on curves or rough roads.
Although we are focussing here on the vibration isolation
aspects of automotive suspensions, it is clear that active
suspensions should allow more flexibility in meeting the
several conflicting requirements than suspensions restricted
to the use of only passive elements.
Although there are arguments in favor of high bandwidth,
fully active suspensions (Tillback and Brod, 1989; Wright and
Williams, 1989), most commercial systems can be classified as
low bandwidth systems which attempt to control body modes
in the 1 Hz frequency range actively but control wheel hop
modes in the 10 Hz frequency range mainly by passive
means. The active systems have proved effective in controlling body motions better than passive suspensions but generally have not been as successful in improving high frequency
isolation (reducing "harshness" in automotive terminology)
compared to passive suspensions. A comparison of two types
of active suspensions with a standard passive suspension on
the same model automobile (Hillebrecht et al., 1992) using
182/ Vol. 117, JUNE 1995

o Resonant Frequency
or Spring
Conventional
Suspensions

r-CHJL
essure Control |

Resonant Freauency
ol Soting

Fig. 13 Schematic diagrams showing the skyhook damper force

as a component of the control strategy for the Nissan hydraulic
active suspension (Anon., 1989)

customers' subjective opinions showed that only certain aspects of body control by the active systems were considered
to be noticeable improvements.
The number of patents in the field of active suspensions is
very large (Wallentowitz, 1991) but there continues to be a
need for concepts which solve important motion control and
isolation problems without requiring unrealistic hardware
performance or costs which outweigh benefits.
There are many attempts in recent years to sort out the
essential and realizable functions which active suspensions
can be expected to perform, (Hrovat, 1993; Karnopp and
Heess, 1991; Karnopp, 1992) and there are a number of
proposed versions of active suspensions which use different
hardware configurations to reduce power, increase reliability
and reduce cost. Figure 12 shows two contrasting concepts.
Fast load leveling (or "slow active" or "low bandwidth")
active systems combined with semi-active controlled shock
absorbers for higher frequency force generation could result
in more practical systems than the high frequency actuator
approach (Karnopp, 1987).
Naturally, there are a wide variety of control systems for
the many proposed or realized active systems. It is interesting
however that many contain a "skyhook damping" component
(Tillback and Brod, 1989; Anon., 1989; Yokoya et al., 1984;
Yokoya et al., 1990; Akatsu et al, 1990). Figure 13 shows
how the Nisson Hydraulic Active Suspension incorporates a
skyhook damper effect. The incorporation of absolute body
velocity feedback in addition to other feedback terms and
forces that could be generated by passive elements allows a
close approach to an optimal state variable feedback system.
This type of control policy is even more prominent when we
consider high frequency control of dampers as a means to
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Active and Semi-Active

Vibration Isolation

D. Karnopp
Department of Mechanical
and Aeronautical Engineering,
University of California, Davis,
Davis, CA 95616

In the five decades since the founding of the ASME Design Engineering Division, the
important problem of vibration isolation has been attacked first through the design of
passive spring-damper suspensions and later by the use of active and semi-active
elements. This paper reviews the historical development of theoretical concepts
necessary for the design of isolation systems and indicates how control theory began to
influence vibration isolation in the last half of this period. Practical active and
semi-active suspensions have only recently become possible with the advent of powerful
but relatively inexpensive signal processors. To illustrate these developments for
engineers who have not been intimately involved with active systems, only simple
vibrational system models will be discussed, although some modern hardware will be
shown which is now being applied to complex systems. Instead of attempting to review
the many theoretical concepts which have been proposed for active systems, this article
will focus on a relatively simple idea with which the author has been associated over the
past thirty years; namely the "skyhook" damper. This idea came through purely
theoretical studies but is now used in combination with other concepts in production
suspension systems. Two quite different application areas will be discussed. The first
involves stable platforms to provide extreme isolation for delicate manufacturing
operations against seismic inputs and the second involves automotive suspensions.
Although similar concepts are found in these two application areas, the widely varying
requirements result in very different suspension hardware. The special case of the
semi-active damper, which requires very little control power and is presently reaching
production, will also be discussed.

Introduction
The theory of vibrations is a triumph of classical analytical
mechanics. Whittaker (1904) traces the development of this
theory from the study of small oscillations of a pendulum by
Galileo through major contributions by Brook Taylor,
D'Alembert, Euler and Daniel Bernoulli who in 1753 showed
that compound vibrations could be resolved into motions of
independent simple modes. Lagrange provided a general
theory of the vibration of systems with finite degrees-of-freedom in 1762-5.
In the face of this theoretical understanding, a mathematical physicist might be excused for thinking that the job of
engineering practical control measures to ameliorate the
undesirable effects of vibration would be relatively trivial. In
fact, apart from the usual problems associated with cost,
reliability, and manufacturability, engineers initially were
prevented from designing effective vibration isolation schemes
by a lack of education in the field. It has been pointed out
(Den Hartog, 1947) that prior to the middle 1930's, "the
subject had not yet been introduced into the curriculum of
our technical schools." Den Hartog, having been trained as
an electrical engineer and familiar with the techniques used

Contributed by the Design Engineering Division for publication in the

Special 50th Anniversary Design Issue. Manuscript received Oct. 1994.
Technical Editor: D. J. Inman.

to describe alternating current electrical circuits, was a pioneer in introducing mechanical engineers to vibration control
means.
In the early days of vibration isolation, the emphasis was
on the balancing of rotating machinery and the introduction
of compliant suspension elements. Most of the time, spring
rates for suspensions were chosen to avoid resonant response
but in some cases the basic concepts were surprisingly vague.
Den Hartog himself (Den Hartog, 1947, p. 149) answers his
own question, " . . . how do we have to design the main
springs [of an automobile] for maximum riding comfort... ?
with the answer, "the springs have to be made as soft as
possible... ." Since there was no discussion of any real
limitations to the softness of suspension springs, it seems that
design guides for isolation systems were not very well developed at this time.
The importance of energy dissipation in suspension systems was recognized early on but it was often not clear how
much damping was desirable and, for that matter, there were
few damping devices which produced the viscous type of
damping forces assumed by the linear theory of vibrations.
The relatively few special cases treatable by the mathematical theory of nonlinear oscillations provided little help for
practical vibration control and computers capable of simulating nonlinear systems were not readily available until fairly
recently. In many cases, what damping did exist came from
JUNE 1995, Vol. 117/177

Special 50th Anniversary Design Issue

Copyright 1995 by ASME

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101
5

V/VO (BP: BPN/4 TO BPNX4]

l=j

:::=

fi=
M
A
/\

2
10
5

*gsd

-*

r v-

"V
V
V

^
\\\\ s \ \
S, \ \
\\
^
\
^
' /\

2
icr1

Is

- -4B0O X | .1524 X 2 1348 Xg + &M X

" 7~m.

5
_l_

\
\

0.1

\\s \

10"
10"

10

2
5
10 1
FREQUENCY [HZ]

10 c

Fig. 16 Variations in frequency response of the body velocity due

to roadway velocity input for quarter car model as passive damping
is varied (dark line represents conventional suspension)

101

V/VO [BA: BPNXO TO BPN*4]

5
2
10
5

~*s~
k

-. V '
s \ V

N\^

"^
.
2

_L_
10
Frequency (rad/sec)

100

1000

Fig. 18 Acceleration frequency response curves for reference

passive suspension and an ideal complete state variable feedback
active suspension (Chalasani, 1986)

mounting point and to electronically convert to body velocity

at each of the four mounting points.
Recently there has been indication that semi-active suspension systems will be commercially available (Anon., 1992;
Anon., 1994a,b). It may be that a system using low power
active elements for vehicle attitude control and semi-active
dampers for resonance control and intermediate frequency
isolation will finally prove to be commercially more successful than the low band with hydraulic active systems presently
on the market (Karnopp, 1987). One must keep in mind that
while a semi-active damper can improve isolation against
roadway unevenness, it cannot react effectively to reduce roll
in a steady corner or pitch due to severe braking or acceleration. In these cases, it seems necessary to be able to supply
energy as well as to dissipate it.

io-i

10"
10"

10
2
5
10 1
FREQUENCY [HZ]

102

Fig. 17 Variations in frequency response of body velocity due to

roadway velocity input for quarter car model as skyhook damping
is introduced (dark line represents conventional suspension)

As far as body isolation goes, a skyhook damping force

applied between body and wheel produces results not much
different from full state feedback using an unrealistically
ideal force generator (Chalisani, 1986). See Fig. 18. One
reason is that any linear feedback force applied between
wheel and body results in a fixed frequency response for the
body transfer function at a specific frequency near the wheel
hop frequency (Hedrick and Butsuen, 1988). Thus active
control forces have major effects on isolation near the body
resonant frequency but little effect near the wheel hop resonant frequency. This can be seen in Figs. 16, 17, and 18, and
reinforces the idea that skyhook damping of the body absolute velocity is a good place to start in developing a control
law for semi-active suspension vehicles. Semi-active dampers
can also be controlled to emphasize reduction in pitch and
roll motions using either pitch and roll rate sensors or
through the use of absolute velocity sensors at three or more
points on the body. Some semi-active shock absorbers incorporate accelerometers to measure body acceleration at the
184/ Vol. 117, JUNE 1995

Conclusions
It is probably no surprise in retrospect that progress on
practical active or semi-active vibration control systems has
been relatively slow. The design of such systems requires a
clear concept, related not only to the mechanics of the
system but also to automatic control and system dynamics.
Sensors and actuators must be available and their limitations
considered and finally cost effective signal processing devices
must be available. Only relatively recently has progress in all
these aspects come to the point at which practical designs are
possible. The reason why so much effort has been expended
in the field of automobile active suspensions no doubt has to
do with a potential mass market, but there are many other
potential areas for active control. Active noise control techniques are well advanced, active motor mounts are in the
prototype stage and there are even proposals for actively
isolating buildings from earthquakes. Although each application area has its own specific problems, some of which may
prove practically insurmountable, the future will certainly see
an increasing use of active means for vibration and noise
isolation.
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Anon., 1992, "Computerized Electronic Suspension," Yamaha-Ohlins
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Special 50th Anniversary Design Issue

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