Optimizing Vibration Attenuation Performance of a Magnetorheological Damper-Based Semi-active Seat Suspension Using Artificial Intelligence

• Main Authors: Xinhua Liu, Ningning Wang, Kun Wang, Hui Huang, Zhixiong Li, Thompson Sarkodie-Gyan, Weihua Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-11-01
• Series: Frontiers in Materials
• Subjects: magnetorheological damper; semi-active seat suspension; vibration control; artificial intelligence; PID controller
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmats.2019.00269/full

This paper aims to improve control performance for a magnetorheological damper (MRD)-based semi-active seat suspension system. The vibration of the suspension is isolated by controlling the stiffness of the MRD using a proportion integration differentiation (PID) controller. A new intelligent method for optimizing the PID parameters is proposed in this work. This new method appropriately incorporates particle swarm optimization (PSO) into the PID-parameter searching processing of an improved fruit fly optimization algorithm (IFOA). Thus, the PSO-IFOA method possesses better optimization ability than IFOA and is able to find a globally optimal PID-parameter set. The performance of the PID controller optimized by the proposed PSO-IFOA for attenuating the vibration of the MRD suspension was evaluated using a numerical model and an experimental platform. The results of both simulation and experimental analysis demonstrate that the proposed PSO-IFOA is able to optimize the PID parameters for controlling the MRD semi-active seat suspension. The control performance of the PSO-IFOA-based PID is superior to that of individual PSO-, FOA-, or IFOA-based methods.