Comparison of Vehicle Suspension Dynamic Responses for Simplified and Advanced Adjustable Damper Models with Friction, Hysteresis and Actuation Delay for Different Comfort-Oriented Control Strategies

Throughout the years, many control strategies for adjustable dampers have been proposed, designed to boost the performance characteristics of a vehicle. Comfort control strategies such as Skyhook (SH), acceleration-driven damping or power-driven damping have been tested many times using simulation models of vehicles. Those tests, however, were carried out using simplified damper models – linear or simple bilinear with symmetric characteristics. This article presents the results of examination of the influence of using more complex damper models, with friction, hysteresis and time delay of state switching implemented, on the chosen dynamic responses of a suspension system for excitations in the typical exploitation frequency range. The results of the test are compared with those found in the literature and with the results of simulations performed with a simplified version of the advanced model used. The main conclusion is that friction and hysteresis add extra force to the already existing damping force, acting like a damping increase for all analysed control strategies. The actuation delays limit the effectiveness in a sense of comfort increasing to only some frequencies. The research shows the importance of including the proposed modules in testing for both adjustable and passive dampers.