Neural Network Control of Non-Linear Full Vehicle Model Vibrations

Abstract

The aim of this study was the development of a Neural Network (NN) based controller for vibrations of a non-linear eight-degree-of-freedom vehicle model with active suspensions. This controller, which had a very good performance for the results both in time and frequency responses, has been applied to the vehicle. Only having controllers under the vehicle body without u5 does not provide a good control over passenger comfort. The simulation results prove that, using controllers under the vehicle body and passenger seat provided excellent ride comfort. Therefore, this strategy should be taken into account by considering the control of the vehicle body and passenger seat together. Using this strategy, the bounce motion of the passenger reduces with an extra controller that applies very small force input, since the other controllers are active. If the passenger seat controller is eliminated and only other controllers are kept, the vibrations increase. A successful improvement has also been obtained in the isolation of the vertical acceleration of passengers. Frequency response plots of a passenger for this strategy support the results obtained. In conclusion, adding a controller under the passenger seat in addition to the other controllers improves ride comfort considerably. The decrease in vibration amplitudes and the excellent improvement in resonance values support this result.