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Dynamic Modeling and Simulation of Automotive

Suspension System with Overwhelming
Controller

Conference Paper · October 2013

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Tameshwer Nath Rastogi Vikas
Indian Institute of Technology Indore Delhi Technological University
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 Dynamic Modeling and Simulation of Automotive
Suspension System with Overwhelming Controller

Tameshwer Nath (Assistant Professor) Vikas Rastogi (Professor),

Swami Vivekanand Subharti University, Delhi Technological University, Bawana Road
Meerut India Shahabad, Delhi, India
tameshwer.nath@gmail.com rastogivikas@yahoo.com

Abstract: In recent years many automotive manufacturers and researchers have paid considerable attention
to the possibility of reducing the vibration effects in vehicle by means of active control techniques. This is
due to the increasing interest and awareness of the potential of the electronically controlled suspension to
improve vehicle performance. Active suspension systems for road vehicles play an important role in
accident prevention. In recent years, rapid developments have been observed in this area with advancing
technology and electronic control systems. This Paper discusses the active suspension control of a
vehicle model. The concept of using an active suspension system for vehicle is to provide the best
performance of car controlling. A fully active suspension system is aimed to control the suspension over
the full bandwidth of the system. It is considered to be the way of increasing load carrying capacities,
handling and ride quality. This paper compares the passive suspension response with various types of
controller design, which includes PID and overwhelming controller. The response of system is simulated
using Symbols Shakti Software. The various type of physical and mathematical model of various cars
are also presented to portray the controller design.

Keywords: Full Car model, Comfort evaluation, Bond graph modeling, PID Controller, Overwhelming
controller

1. Introduction
A key aspect of vehicle research field is improving car ride quality and handling performance. It
is achieved by utilizing suspension system. Suspension system is generally of two types- passive
and active. The suspension system of most vehicles is purely passive, i.e., can be schematized as
composed of passive elements, e.g., dampers and springs. Development of active suspensions
has become necessary in order to improve simultaneously the ride comfort and road holding ability
since the conventional passive suspensions tuned at a particular speed or at a certain road
condition, are becoming insufficient to meet the tight performance requirements demanded by
users. Active suspensions [3, 4, 5] have better performance than passive suspensions [1 , 2]. In
an active suspension the interaction between vehicle body and wheel is regulated by an actuator
of variable length. The actuator is usually hydraulically controlled and applies between body and
wheel a force that represents the control action generally determined with an optimization
procedure. This paper is mainly focused to application of full car model with controllers
(Proportional- Integral- Derivative and Overwhelming) for passive and active suspension.
In this paper, an attempt is made to develop an active suspension with PID and Overwhelming
controller to improve the performance of suspension system and performance is verified with
SYMBOLS SHAKTI Software.

2.1 Dynamic model of vehicle: The dynamic model of full car model is presented in
Figure.1. It is combination of four quarter car model or two half car model means of four wheels.
It has seven degree of freedom. A Full car model with passive suspension is shown in Figure 1.
Assume a vehicle driven on a straight road in a steady-state condition, i.e., with constant thrust and
without brake action. In this case, the vertical dynamics of the vehicle including the car body heave,
roll, and pitch motions, and the bounce motions of the four wheels. This is a typical seven degrees
of freedom characterization of the vertical dynamics used for the computer controlled suspension.
The vertical dynamic model is shown in Figure. 2.

Let Zw = [ Zw1 Zw2 Zw3 Zw4]T 1

Where Zwi is the displacement of i th wheel of the vehicle, where i =1, 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the front-
left, front-right, rear- left and rear-right wheels. Also, the body motion vector q is defined as

q = [h r p]T 2

Where h is the heave displacement of the center of gravity of the car body (sprung mass), r is the car
body’s roll angle, and p is the car body’s pitch angle. Both r and p are the global angular displacements
with respect to a perfect flat road surface.

Let Zb = [Zb1 Zb2 Zb3 Zb4 ]T 3

Figure.1 Physical model of full car model

 Figure.2: Seven degrees of freedom full-car model

2.2 Bond graph modeling of Full car Model:

The bond graph model of full car is presented in Figure.2. The full car suspension model is
usually represented as a seven degree of freedom system, which has heave, pitch, roll, yaw and
motion of the front and rear wheels. Figure. 3 shows the bond graph suspension representation
without controller.

Figure.3: Bond graph model of full car model

2.3 Bond graph modeling with PID controller
The bond graph model of PID control system is shown in Figure 4. A system is applying force
on a full car system. In the present model, ‘mu’ is representing a derivative gain, Gp is
proportional gain which modulated on a Transfer Function (TF) and Gi is an integral gain.
 Figure 4. Bond graph model of PID control system

When this controller is attached with the full car model, one may achieve the bond graph model as shown
in Figure5.

Figure 5: Bond graph model of full car model with PID controller

3. Bond graph modeling with overwhelming controller

3.1 Overwhelming Controller for Full Car Suspension System

Let us consider a car suspension system, and an overwhelming controller with compliance and
damping considered as well. The controller scheme is depicted in Figure 6. The suspension
parameters ms (mass), ks (stiffness), rs (resistance) may be undetermined functions of time or
states whereas the controller parameters Mc (mass), Kc (stiffness) and Rc (resistance) are linear
time invariant. A force eref (t) drives the controller to generate the desired motion. The bond graph
model of the system is shown in Figure 7. In this controller, the lever of Figure 7 is made non-
conservative by using transformers with different gains and activated bonds as shown in Figure 8.
A flow-activated bond transmits only flow information to the system at the port, which is flow
causalled. Such a flow-activated bond does not take account for the effort information. In the same
way, an effort-

Figure 6: Schematic diagram of a suspension system and overwhelming controller

Figure 7: Bond graph of suspension system and overwhelming controller

effort-activated bond transmits only effort information to the system at its ports, which is effort
causalled and does not take any cognizance of flow information. The flow activated transformer
with modulus as unity is the feedback path of the

Figure 8: Reduced bond graph model of Controller and suspension system

flow information with no power associated with it. The effort-activated transformer with high
gain is an effort amplifier.
The transfer function between suspension output flow fsus (s) and force input eref (s) can be
evaluated as
�����( �7 ( 𝜇𝐻 � ( �)
= 1+ 𝜇 𝐻 �(�)��(�)
4
�)
�) =
�1 (�)
����
(�)

where s is the Laplace variable. R(s) is the transfer function of the suspension between its output
flow and driving effort given by,

�(�
) = (�
7 (�)/(�
6 (� /(𝑚𝑝 �
) = [� 2 + ����+ 𝑘��)] 5

C(s) is the transfer function of the controller between the output effort and command input flow
given as,
��(�) = (� 5 (�)/(� 5 (�) = (Mcs2+ Rcs + Kc)/s 6

When µH >>1, one obtains from Eq. (4), (5) and Eq. (6), the overall transfer function as,
�����( 1 1
=
𝐶�
= 𝑀𝑐 �+���+𝐾��/�
7
�)
����
(�)

Here Mc, Rc and Kc are the inertia (differential gain), resistance (proportional gain) and stiffness
(integral gain) respectively of the overwhelming controller, and μH is high feed forward gain. It is
evident from Equation (7) that the suspension inertance ms, compliance ks, and damping rs are
all overwhelmed by the controller mass Mc, compliance Kc and damping Rc respectively. In this
way the high gain based overwhelming control concept can also be used for higher order system
involving compliances and dampers. Any desired suspension performance parameters may be
obtained by suitably selecting the controller parameters. The detailed bond graph of car suspension
system is shown in Figure 9.
Figure.9: Bond graph model of full car with overwhelming controller
4. Simulation- It is a representation of reality through use of model under a given sets of
conditions.

Figure 10 (a) Deflection of sprunged spring for full car

a) without controller b) with PID controller
c) With overwhelming controller
The simulation parameters used for simulating the model are given in Table.1 and the value of
various gain are given in Table.2.
 Table 1 Full car parameter

S.No Item Value Unit

1. Sprung Mass (Ms) 1136 Kg
2. Front Unsprung Mass (Mfu) 60 Kg
3. Rear Unsprung Mass (Mru) 60 Kg
4. Pitch Inertia (Ip) 2400 Kg/m2
5. Roll Inertia (Ir) 400 Kg/m2
6. Front Suspension Stiffness 36.294 KN/m
7. Rear Suspension Stiffness 36.294 KN/m
8. Front Damping 3924 Ns/m
9. Rear Damping 3924 Ns/m
10. Distance From C.G to Front Wheel (a) 1.40 m
11. Distance From C.G to Rear Wheel (a) 1.40 m
12. Front Track Width (b) 0.531 m
13. Rear Track Width (b) 0.531 m
14. Front Tyre Stiffness (Kft) 182.47 KN/m
15. Rear Tyre Stiffness (Krt) 182.47 KN/m

Table 2: Controllers gain

S.No Items Value

1. Proportional Gain (Gp) 0.9
2. Integral Gain (Ip) 0.0225
3. Derivative Gain (Pd) 4.5
4. Overwhelming Gain (μ) 2.5

5. Conclusions - This paper has been attempted to obtain the dynamic behavior of car through
bond graph technique and to evaluate the various controller scheme through simulation at
various speeds. This may be useful for analyzing the comfort of the system, which may be
compared with the available study on this subject matter. However, the following conclusions
are made in this paper present in next sub section.

The dynamic model of car had been constructed through bond graph technique.
The model of controller-suspension contact dynamics had been constructed by using
bond graph technique.
Seven degree of freedom model is used for the analysis.
The use of overwhelming controller is to improve the performance of suspension system.
The high gain based overwhelming control scheme can also be used for higher order
system involving compliances and dampers. Any desired suspension performance
parameters may be obtained by suitably selecting the controller parameters

6. References:
[1] Yagiz, N., Hacioglu, Y., Backstepping control of a vehicle with Passive suspensions,
Control Engineering Practice, 2-11, 2008.
[2] Karnopp, D., Analytical results for optimum actively damped suspension under random
excitation, Journal of Acoustic Stress and Reliability in Design, 111, 278-283, 1989.
 [3] Sun, L., Optimum design of ‘road-friendly’ vehicle suspension systems subjected to rough
pavement surfaces, Applied Mathematical Modeling, 26, 635-652, 2002.
[4] Sireteanu, T., Stoia, N., Damping optimization of passive and semi-active vehicle suspension
by numerical simulation, Proceedings of the Romanian Academy, 2003.
[5] Sun, L., Cai, X., Yang, J., Genetic algorithm-based optimum vehicle suspension design using
minimum dynamic pavement load as a design criterion, Journal of Sound and Vibration 301, 18-
27, 2007
[6] Sun, L., On human perception and evaluation to road surfaces, Journal of Sound and
Vibration, 247, 547-560, 2001.
[7] Crolla D.A. et al.,Passive suspension control; Performance comparison using control laws
applied to a Full car model, Vehicle System Dynamics 20, 107-120, 1991.
[8] G. Corriga, A. Giua, G. Usai, “An H2 formulation for the designing of a passive vibration
isolation system for cars,” Vehicle System Dynamics, Vol. 26, pp. 381–393, 1996.
[9] M.J. Crosby, D.C. Karnopp, “The active damper: a new concept in shock and vibration control,”
43rd Shock and Vibration Bulletin, June 1973.
[10] G. Corriga, S. Sanna, G. Usai, “An optimal tandem active-passive suspension for road vehicles
with minimum power consumption,” IEEE Trans. on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp.
210–216, 1991

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