Managing the handling–comfort trade-off in the full car model by active suspension control

The effectiveness of a car suspension is usually assessed by the ability to provide maximum ride comfort and maintain continuous contact of the wheels with the road (road holding). This paper develops an active suspension control algorithm for the full car model (FCM) to improve its characteristics by active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). The ride comfort and road holding characteristics of the FCM suspension system are compared with those of the passive suspension. We propose an optimization algorithm for managing the comfort–handling trade-off using a single variable. This algorithm is based on forecasting the future values of the car chassis displacement and the roll angle depending on the dynamics of the ADRC controller on a given horizon. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the active suspension system with the proposed algorithm in improving the ride comfort and road holding characteristics.