Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Mechatronics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mechatronics

Nonlinear tracking control based on extended state observer for vehicle

active suspensions with performance constraints
Huihui Pan a, Weichao Sun a,, Huijun Gao a, Tasawar Hayat b, Fuad Alsaadi b
a
b

State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System (HIT), Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China
Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 20 March 2014
Revised 15 June 2014
Accepted 31 July 2014
Available online 27 August 2014
Keywords:
Active suspension system
Extended state observer
Nonlinear tracking control
Performance constraints

a b s t r a c t
In this paper, a nonlinear tracking control strategy with extended state observer (ESO) is presented for
vehicle active suspensions to improve the ride comfort, where suspension spaces, dynamic tire loads
are considered as time-domain constraints to be guaranteed. The unique characteristic of the proposed
approach lies in the independence on accurate mathematical model. More exactly, the unknown dynamics and external disturbances of the vehicle suspension are regarded as an augmented state of the system
and are estimated using the designed ESO. The stability analysis shows that both the estimation error and
the tracking error of the control output are bounded and that the upper bounds of the errors monotonously decrease with the increase of the observer bandwidth. Finally, a competitive experiment on a
quarter-car suspension prototype is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control
schemes.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Vehicle suspension systems play a crucial role in reasonably well
isolating its passengers from the vibrations generated by irregular
road on the human body, keeping tire contact with the ground
and improving the vehicle maneuverability. Compared with the
passive or semiactive suspension systems, the active suspension
systems are more effective in enhancing the ride comfort and the
road holding capability. Therefore, active suspension control is currently paid considerable interest in both academia and industry for
the issues on how to guarantee the stability of the suspension
systems and achieve the required suspension performances. In
particular, the force actuator in active suspensions is able to both
add and dissipate energy from the system, which has a potential
to control the attitude of the vehicle, to reduce the negative effects
of braking and the vehicle roll during cornering maneuvers.
It is still a challenge to develop an appropriate control strategy
for dealing with the suspension performances, such as ride comfort, which means to isolate passengers from vibration and shock
arising from road roughness; handling performance, which refers
to the uninterrupted contact forces of tires and the road surface;
and suspension travel, which is associated with the displacement
between a sprung mass and an unsprung mass. However, these
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: w.sun@hit.edu.cn (W. Sun).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mechatronics.2014.07.006
0957-4158/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

requirements are generally conicting, and a compromise of the

requirements needs to be reached. In order to manage the tradeoff
between the conicting performance, many multi-objective active
suspension control approaches are presented based on various
control techniques [110]. Among these studies, an acceptable
approach is to characterize the ride comfort as the main control
target and the other performances as time domain constraints.
To mention a few, in [5] rst proposed a load-dependent controller
to solve the problem of multi-objective control for active suspensions. This method based on a parameter-dependent Lyapunov
function to establish controllers, whose gain matrix depends on
the on-line available information of the body mass and the
performance requirements are fused in the controller design. In
[6], the authors have investigated the barrier Lyapunov function
in the controller design, which can achieve a less conservatism
than the classic Quadratic Lyapunov Function. At the same time,
the proposed constrained adaptive control scheme can improve
ride comfort and satisfy the performance constraints in the
presence of parametric uncertainties.
To control an active suspension, the control algorithms must be
able to deal with mechanical nonlinear dynamics and be operated
under imprecise and uncertain conditions. In the existing literatures, many control methods are proposed based on uncertain
systems [1118]. Among the strategies, most researches have dealt
with a linear model to develop control laws or use an adaptive
control scheme to conquer the limited nonlinear proper ties of

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

suspension systems. However, if the system is highly nonlinear over

the range of operation, its adaptive schemes may show severe limitations. For instance, if a wheel stroke is so strong that the stiffness
of a suspension is beyond the linear range, it might be practically
impossible to identify parameters through ordinary identication
[1921]. Another way is employing the fuzzy logic to control the
suspension systems. Active suspension systems generally have
dynamic characteristics with complexities and nonlinearities, making it more arduous to design a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for
manipulating these systems. Such a control strategy has the specic
feature of being able to develop the controller without the need of a
mathematical model of the system. However, the application of
fuzzy logic control still requires considerable effort in determining
suitable membership functions and fuzzy rules. This is particularly
true if the system is complicated or nonlinear [2224].
Based on the above discussions, active suspension systems have
dynamic characteristics with complexities and nonlinearities, so it
is more appropriate to design controllers for these systems independence on accurate mathematical model. In this paper, a practical method based on ESO technology is applied to the vehicle
suspension system, which actively estimates and compensates
for internal dynamic changes of the suspension elements and
external disturbances in real time. In many challenging engineering mechanical systems [2528], the ESO concept is also successfully employed. However, the employment of the ESO onto active
suspension system is rather new, and still needs a lot of research
to be done regarding ESO from both theoretical and practical
points of view. The main contributions of the paper are as follows:
 To address the issues of the estimation of state and uncertainties, an feedback linearization controller is designed
and integrated with the ESO. It is worth mentioning that,
unlike the standard state observers, the state in ESO is
extended beyond the regular physical variables to include
the effects of unknown disturbance and dynamics in their
totality. If the estimation procedure is accurate then this
disturbance rejection feature allows user to treat the considered system with a simpler model, since the negative
effects of modeling uncertainty are compensated in real
time. Thus, by means of the ESO concept, the control
system does not require an accurate model of the vehicle
suspension model, it is very robust against parameter
variations, noise, and disturbances.
 Another advantage of the controller is its few tuning
parameters, making the controller easy to implement in
the real world. At the same time, the closed-loop stability
of the system under the proposed ESO-based feedback
linearization controller is established.
 Finally, a competitive experiment on a quarter-car suspension prototype is carried out considering the parameter
uncertainties in the vehicle suspension dynamic system
to validate the efciency of the ESO-based feedback linearization controller in tracking performance.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 formulates
the problem of controller design for active suspension systems. In
Section 3, the results of the feedback linearization controller design
procedure is present. The simulations demonstrate the effectiveness
and advantage of the proposed approach are given in Section 4.
Finally, the studys ndings and conclusions are given in Section 5.
2. Problem formulation
Active suspension systems generally exhibit nonlinear and
quantitatively characteristics, so their mathematical models are
difcult to accurately identify. Qualitatively, the complexity

consists of the system nonlinearity, external disturbances, structural and parametric uncertainty, sophisticated and multiple
objectives, and performance criteria. In general, a comprehensive
vehicle model is too complicated for use in control system design.
Therefore, by means of an extensively used model in the literature,
a simplied model capturing the essential characteristics of a real
vehicle system is depicted.
2.1. Nonlinear quarter-car model
Here, the dynamics structure diagram of the quarter-vehicle
model is shown in Fig. 1, which is valid for maneuvers involving
a quarter active suspension. The sprung mass ms represents the
car chassis, and the unsprung mass mu represents mass of the
wheel assembly. The passive components of the suspension system
consist of a non-linear stiffening spring with the stiffness coefcients of linear ks and nonlinear terms ksn , and the piece-wise linear
damper with the damping coefcients for the extension be and
compression movements bc . The actuator force between the
sprung and unsprung masses is represented by ut. The tire is
assured contact with the surface of the road when the vehicle is
traveling. It is modeled as a linear spring with a stiffness coefcient
kf and damping coefcient bf of the tire. The zs and zu are the vertical displacements of the sprung and unsprung masses, respectively, and zr is the road displacement input. Derived from
Newtons second law, the dynamic behavior of an active suspension system may be expressed by the following differential
equations:

mszs  F d z_ s ; z_ u ; t  F s zs ; zu ; t ut;
muzu F d z_ s ; z_ u ; t F s zs ; zu ; t  F t zu ; zr ; t  F b z_ u ; z_ r ; t  ut; 1
where F d and F s denote the forces produced by the springs and
dampers, respectively, and F t ; F b are the elasticity force and damping force of the tires.
Remark 1. It is to be noted that with a change in the number of
passengers or the payload, the vehicle load will easily vary and this
will accordingly change the vehicle mass ms . On the other hand,
the range of change for the sprung mass is determined by the
unload and maximum mass of the vehicle, decreased with the
sprung weight. At the same time, considering the natural environment and articial factors, the stiffness coefcients and damping
coefcients may gradually change over time, which will greatly
affect the controller design. Therefore, in this model, the proposed
strategy requires minimal a priori information of the plant, which
means ms ; mu ; F d ; F s ; F t , and F b are unknown.

zs
ms
Fs

Fd
zu
mu

Ft

Fb

zr

Fig. 1. The structure of quarter-car active suspension.

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

2.2. Problem statement

The performance requirements of a vehicle suspension include
the following aspects.
1. Ride comfort: For active suspension, improving the ride comfort sensed by passenger is one of the main tasks. So ride
comfort is an important performance for vehicle design,
which means to design a controller that is able to stabilize
the vertical motion of the car body and to isolate the vibrations transmitted to the passengers as well.
2. Road holding: An important preliminary for ride safety is to
ensure contact between the tire and the road. Thus, the
transfer of longitudinal force is enabled, so that the driver
can control the vehicle by steering, throttle, and brake
inputs. Therefore, in order to assure the safety and improve
the vehicle handling quality, the dynamic wheel load should
be bounded and not exceed the static tire load, that is,

jF t F b j < ms mu g;

where g denotes the gravitational constant.

3. Suspension space limits: In order to avoid damaging vehicle
mechanical structure and possibly result in deterioration
of ride comfort, the active suspension controller must be
capable of preventing the suspension from hitting its travel
limits. Thus, the requirement can be described as

jzs  zu j 6 zmax ;

where zmax is the maximum suspension deection, under any

road disturbance input and vehicle running conditions.
In a car suspension, control objectives have to be fullled for a
car to achieve good comfort as well as good handing while keeping
track of constraints dened by physical limitations of the car and
active suspension system. As the plant is not fully known due to
unknown variables such as the sprung mass, damping and tire stiffness, many traditional control strategies are not suitable. Hence,
how to handle related tradeoffs and weaken the impact of the
uncertainty of the system are crucial for the successful design of
an active suspension system. Based on the aforementioned statements, this study tries to deal with the following control problem:
Problem 1. Given an active suspension system without an accurate plant model, synthesize control input u to stabilize the vertical
motions of the closed-loop system in the presence of parametric
uncertainties, and meanwhile the essential performance requirements, i.e., ride safety conditions in (2), suspension space limit in
(3) are guaranteed.

3. Proposed solution
The existing control design method for vibrational vehicle suspension systems are greatly depended on accurate dynamic model,
or at least depended on the known model structure. However, it
could pose some rather considerable challenges in engineering
practical requirements. The factors such as the internal dynamics
of the vehicle systems and external disturbances which include
the measurement noise, the output disturbance, and unmodel
dynamic terms arising from mechanical imperfections, bring structure uncertainties and modeling errors into the system that cannot
be simply ignored. If the disturbance, representing the discrepancy
between the plant and its model, is estimated in real time, then the
plant-model mismatch can be effectively compensated for, making
the model-based design tolerant of a large amount of uncertainties.
In this circumstance, it is desired to design a observer to estimate

the uncertainties (including parametric uncertainties and structure

uncertainties) in systems. This requirement of obtaining the estimate of uncertainties is met by the ESO [30]. In particular, an
ESO provides an estimate of the external disturbance and plant
dynamics. Only through the inputoutput data of the considered
plant, the necessary system information is obtained. In each sampling time, the information is acquired and used by the feedback
control system. Thus, by employing ESO schemes to design the
controller for the active suspension system.
3.1. Feedback linearization controller
The geometric control theory based feedback linearization
method is one of the well-researched strategies for designing trajectory tracking controllers for nonlinear systems. In order to explain
the feedback linearization concept, consider a single-inputsingleoutput (SISO) second-order input afne nonlinear system:

x f x; x
_ gx; xu;
_

where u is the control input. In the present context, by dening the

_ (4) can be written in state space
state variables as x1 x and x2 x,
model as

x_ 1 x2 ;
_ gx; xu:
_
x_ 2 f x; x

If the reference trajectory is given as xr , then the error between the

actual x1 and the reference trajectory xr can be given by e1 x1  xr .
The time derivative of e1 is written as e_ 1 x_ 1  x_ r x2  x_ r .
The switching function e2 is dened for a combination of the
error variable e1 and e_ 1 as

e2 e_ 1 k1 e1 x2  x2eq ;

x2eq ,  k1 e1 x_ r ;

where k1 is a positive feedback gain. Since Gs e1 s=e2 s

1=s k1 is a stable transfer function, making e1 small or converging to zero is equivalent to making e2 as small as possible. The
control input u should be designed to make e2 as small as possible.
Thus, the time derivative of e2 is given by

_ gx; xu
_  x_ 2eq :
e_ 2 f x; x

Based on the system model, a feedback linearization controller

can be designed as

1
1
_ x_ 2eq  e1  k2 e2
_ t;
f x; x
f x; x
_
_
gx; x
gx; x

where k2 is a positive feedback gain, and the new input t is given by

t xr K 1 xr  x1 K 2 x_ r  x2 :

The values of K 1 1 k1 k2 ; K 2 k1 k2 being the design parameters are required to be chosen such that the desired tracking
performance is achieved.
Based on the previous designed process, we can conclude the
following lemma.
Lemma 1. For the given SISO system (4), by designing the proposed
feedback linearization control law (8), the closed-loop system is
asymptotically stable, i.e., all the tracking errors will converge to zero
as the time goes to innity.
Proof. Consider a Lyapunov functional candidate as follow

1 2 1 2
e e :
2 1 2 2

10

Thus, combining the control input u in (8), the time derivative of V

can be obtained as

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

V_ k1 e21  k2 e22 6 0:

11

Integrating both sides of inequality V_ 6 0 from 0 to t results in

Vt

_ s V0 6 V0;
Vd

12

uncertainty, i.e., hs f_ , and is assumed to be an unknown but

bounded function. The state space observer, denoted as the linear
extended state observer (LESO), of (17) is constructed as

which implies

je1 j 6

p
2V0;

je 2 j 6

p
2V0:

^s ;
z_ As z Bs u Ls ys  y
^
ys C s z;

where z z1

13

z2

z3  , Ls b1

18
T

b3  is the observer gain vec

T
tor. The observer gains are chosen as Ls 3x0 3x20 x30 , such
b2

Eq. (13) further leads to

that the characteristic polynomial k0 s s3 b1 s2 b2 s b3

p
p
jx1 j 6 jxr j 2V 2 0 6 kxr k1 2V 2 0;
p
jx2 j 6 kx_ r k1 k1 1 2V 2 0:

s x0 3 is Hurwitz, which places the observer poles at x0 .

14

From (14), we can easily obtain that e_ 1 t; e_ 2 t are bounded, which

leads to

2 k1 e1 e_ 1  k2 e2 e_ 2
V

15

is bounded. In the end, V_ 2 is uniformly continuous. By using Lyapunov-like lemma [20], we have V_ 2 ! 0 as t ! 1, and then
e1 ! 0; e2 ! 0, which means that the tracking errors e1 ; e2 converge to zero asymptotically. h
Remark 2. If the exact system model is known, i.e., f ; g is known
function, and dx; t 0, then the designed feedback linearization
controller (8) can obtain asymptotic tracking performance. In general, the feedback liberalization requires exact cancellation of nonlinearities. While no matter how accurate the mathematical
models of dynamic nonlinearities and parameter identication
are, it is impossible to capture the entire nonlinear behaviors and
exact parameters of actual nonlinear effects. There always exist
parameter deviation and unmodeled nonlinearities which cannot
be modeled by explicit functions. Therefore, the feedback linearization control laws may not offer satisfactory asymptotic tracking
performance.

Remark 3. x0 is known as bandwidth parameter, which greatly

simplies the observer design and tuning. Generally, higher
bandwidths of the observer and controller result in better performance of tracking and disturbance rejection. However, the bandwidth is limited by hardware constraints such as noise and
sampling rates. Therefore, a proper observer bandwidth should
be selected in a compromise between the tracking performance
and the noise tolerance.
Combining (17) with (18), the observer estimation error
equations can be expressed as

~z_ 1 ~z2  b1~z1 ;

~z_ 2 ~z3  b2~z1 ;
~z_ h  b ~z ;
3

19

3 1

where ~zi t xsi t  zi t, i 1; 2; 3.

Now, the observer estimation error ~zi t are scaled by xi1
o , i.e.,
let ei t ~zi t=xi1
,
i

1;
2;
3.
Then,
(19)
can
be
rewritten
as
o

e_ x0 Ae e Be
2

hs

x20

3
where Ae 4 3
1

20

;
1
0
0

3
2 3
0
0
1 5, Be 4 0 5.
1
0

3.2. ESO-based feedback linearization controller

In order to deal with modeling uncertainties of the system in
feedback linearization control, an ESO can be employed to estimate
them. Firstly, we need known the order of the active suspension
model and the approximate value of the parameter m1s in order to
control a process well [29]. As a result, the general description of
the plant in (1) is considered

zs f zs ; z_ s ; d b0 ut;

16

where b0 can be seen as a constant that is approximated to m1s ; d

represents the external disturbance, f zs ; z_ s ; d m1s F d z_ s ; z_ u ; t


F s zs ; zu ; t m1s  b0 ut, or simply f, denotes the combined
effect of external disturbance and internal dynamics. The key idea
of the control design is to obtain the estimated f ^f in real time
by employing an ESO, and the system will be actively compensated
without an explicit mathematical expression of it in the control law.
The state space model (16) is augmented to include an additional
state f. Let xs1 zs ; xs2 z_ s ; xs3 f , and assume that f is differentiable, the state-space form of (16) can be expressed as

x_ s As xs Bs u Es hs ;
y s C s xs ;
2

17

3
2 3
2 3
0 1 0
0
0
4
5
4
5
where As 0 0 1 , Bs b0 , C s 1 0 0 , Es 4 0 5 with
0 0 0
1
0
xs3 f being the augmented state and hs is the rate of change of the

Theorem 1 [25]. There exists a constant ri > 0 and a nite time

T 1 > 0 for any bounded hs such that j~ei tj 6 ri ; i 1; 2; 3; 8t P
T 1 > 0 and x0 > 0. Furthermore, ri O1=xk0 for some positive
integer k.
Remark 4. It is shown that, in the absence of the accurate plant
model, the estimation error of ESO is bounded and that its upper
bound monotonously decreases with the increase of the observer
bandwidth. The assumption of the boundedness of hs means that
there is a limit to the rate of change of the total efforts of the internal dynamics and the external disturbances. Fortunately, for active
suspension system, this assumption seems to be a reasonable one
because its mechanical construction and working environment
does not allow the acceleration to change instantaneously, thus
forcing f_ s to be a bounded variable.
With the convergence of ESO established, the convergence of the
feedback linearization controller is employed next. To achieve
the best ride comfort, it is necessary to cancel the forces caused
by the passive springs and dampers, which act on the car
resulting in vertical acceleration. Now, consider the vehicle suspension dynamics given by (17). In the presence of parameter
uncertainties, we can obtain the the feedback linearization control
law as follows,

1
K 1 xr  x1 K 2 x_ r  x2 xr  f s :
b0

21

To implement this control, one needs the value of the position x1 ,

the velocity x2 , and the uncertainty f s . Since the ESO is given by

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

(18), we can obtain the estimation of uncertainty. With the estimation, the feedback liberalization controller (21) can be rewritten as

1
K 1 xr  x1 K 2 x_ r  x2 xr  z3 :
b0

Thus, the ESO

implementable.

based

feedback

liberalization

22
controller

Theorem 2. Under the proposed feedback linearization law (22), the

bounded tracking performance stability of system (25) for any
bounded ht is guaranteed if the feedback control gain K s in (26) is
selected such that Af A  BK s is Hurwitz matrices.

is
Proof. Using (25), (26), and (28) and carrying out some simplications, the closed-loop system can be shown as the following tracking error dynamics:

3.3. Main result

e_ c Af ec  Bd ~z3 ;
Lemma 2. The following single-input linear system:

x Ax Bw

23

is asymptotically stable if A is a Hurwitz matrix and w is bounded and

satises limt!1 wt 0.
Proof. According to the nal-value theorem, if all poles of sXs lie
in the left half s plane, limt!1 
xt 0 exists. Since wt is bounded
and satises limt!1 wt 0, all poles of sWs lie in the left half s
plane. In addition, all poles of SI  A1 also lie in the left half s
plane since A is a Hurwitz matrix. To this end, all poles of sXs
xt 0 exists.
lie in the left half s plane. Thus, limt!1 
Using the nal-value theorem yields
s!0

s!0

lim sI  A1  lim wt:

s!0

t!1

24

Since A is a Hurwitz matrix, lims!0 sI  A1 is bounded. Using the

condition limt!1 wt 0, it can be obtained from (24) that
limt!1 
xt 0. h
Lemma 3. For system (23), if matrix A is Hurwitz and

limt!1 wt
W c 0, the state converges to a constant vector
A1 BW c , i.e., limt!1 
xt A1 BW c . The result can be easily
followed from Lemma 2 by coordinate transformations.
Combining Lemmas 2 and 3, the boundedness of feedback
linearization control law can be shown as follows:
Now, the closed-loop stability of the system (17) under the
controller-observer structure is established, wherein the controller
is given by (22) and the observer is given by (18). To this end, one
can rewrite (17) as

x_ Ax Bu Bd f ;
y Cx;

25

T
where x zs z_ s  is the state vector, y is the controlled output and




0 1
0
0
, B
, Bd
, C 1 0 , respectively. Then,
A
0 0
b0
1
T
denoting the reference state vector X r xr x_ r  , and dening
the state tracking error ec X r  x. The controller (22) can be
rewritten as

1
u K s X r  K s x xr  z3 ;
b0

26

where K s 1=b0 K 1 K 2  is the state feedback gain vector for the

system (17). It follows that

_
e_ c X_ r  x:

27

The time derivative of X r can be expressed as

X_ r AX r Bd xr :

Remark 5. This can easily shown that, with plant dynamic being
largely unknown, the tracking error and its derivative are bounded,
and their upper bounds monotonously decrease with the increase
of the observer bandwidths. When the estimate error ~z3 is zero, the
error dynamics (29) is asymptotically stable. A similar result can be
expected if the bound of the estimate error is reasonably small.

s!0

lim sI  A1  lim sWs

s!0

where ~z3 is the observer estimation error vector. It can be concluded

from Lemmas 2 and 3 that the closed-loop system (29) is boundedinput-bounded-output stable for any bounded ~z3 if K s is properly
selected. Thus, the stability of the tracking control for braking
system is proved. h

3.4. Guarantee the stability of zero dynamics

lim xt lim sXs lim ssI  A1 Ws

t!1

29

The feedback linearization design yields to a spring mass error

dynamic, while the original system contains unspring mass
subsystem. So the zero dynamics of the subsystem should be
guaranteed. To nd it, we set e1 0, e_ 1 0. Hence, we obtain:

ut F s zs ; zu ; t F d z_ s ; z_ u ; t ms xr r3 :

30

If we use ut in (30) to replace the one in x_ 4 , we obtain the

following zero dynamics:

_
xt
Axt wt;

x
xt 3 ,
x4

0
k
where
A
 mfu


0
b
wt kf
.
ms
z t mfu z_ r t  m
xr r3
mu r
u

1
b
 mfu

31
and

Dening a positive function V 0 xt xT tPxt, with P > 0 is a

positive matrix, we have

_
V_ 0 xt x_ T tPxt xT tPxt
xT tAT P APxt 2xT tPwt:
It is easy to verify that the matrix A has eigenvalues with negative
real parts. Hence, we have AT P AP Q , where Q > 0 is a positive
matrix. Noting that

2xT tPwt 6

xT tPPxt gwT twt;

where g is tuning positive value, the following inequality is

obtained:

1
V_ 0 xt 6 xT tQxt xT tPPxt gwT twt
g


1
1
1
6 kmin P 2 QP2 kmax P V 0 xt gwT twt:

Based on properly chosen matrices P; Q and the tunable value g, we

can guarantee

 1
 1
1
q1 6 kmin P2 QP2  kmax P;

28

where q1 is a positive value. Assume gwT twt 6 q2 , and then,

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

V_ 0 xt 6 q1 V 0 xt q2 :

32

Eq. (32) shows that the Lyapunov function is bounded by


q
q
V 0 xt 6 V 0 x0  2 eq1 t 2 6 q;
q1
q1
(
where q

jxk tj 6

V 0 x0
2q2
q1

 V 0 x0

V 0 x0 P qq21
V 0 x0 < qq21

33

, which tells us that

q
q
; k 3; 4. Hence, we obtain that the zero dynamic
kmin P

is stable.
3.5. Performance constraint
Select tunable parameters to guarantee the required performance constraints. From the above analysis, it can be seen that
all the signals are bounded within the known ranges, and the
bound of suspension space can be obtained as

r


q


jx1  x3 j 6 jx1 j jx3 j 6 kxr k1 A1
;
f Bd r3 
1
kmin P

34

It is clear that if we adjust the tuning parameters and the initial

values so that the inequality

r


q
 1

6 zmax ;
kxr k1 Af Bd r3 
kmin P
1

35
Fig. 2. The structure of quarter-car active suspension setup.

holds, then we can always guarantee

jx1  x3 j 6 zmax :

36

Moreover, the bound of dynamic tire load can be estimated as

jF t F b j jkt x3  zr bt x4  z_ r j 6 kt jx3 j kt jzr j bt jx4 j bt jz_ r j

r
q
kt kzr k1 bt kz_ r k1 :
6 jkt bt j
kmin P
If we adjust the initial values and tuning parameters to meet

jkt bt j

r
q
kt kzr k1 bt kz_ r k1 < ms mu g;
kmin P

37

then

jF t F b j 6 ms mu g;

38

can be guaranteed.
Remark 6. The selection of the design parameters and the initial
values is an important problem to be noted. Based on the previous
analysis, the ESO gain parameters and the initial values should be
chosen to satisfy (35), which implies that the suspension space and
road holding will be guaranteed.

4. Experiment examples
In this section, the proposed ESO-based feedback linearization
controller is implemented on a bench-scale model to emulate a
quarter-car model, as shown in Fig. 2. This active suspension system consists of three masses, or plates. Each mass slides along
stainless steel shafts using linear bearings and is supported by a
set of springs. The upper mass (blue1 plate) represents the vehicle
body supported above the suspension, also known as the sprung
mass. The middle mass (red plate) corresponds to one of the
vehicles tires, or the unsprung mass. The bottom mass (silver plate)
1

For interpretation of color in Fig. 2, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.

by moving vertically simulates the road surface, which is driven by a

powerful DC motor connected to a lead screw and cable transmission
system. The upper mass is connected to the middle plate by a highquality DC motor through a capstan to emulate an active suspension
system that can dynamically compensate for the motions introduced
by the road. Thus, we can design the supplied controller to optimize
the various suspension performance parameters. This experimental
plant is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
approach. The model parameters are listed in Table 1. The controller
parameters are given as b0 1=2:5; w0 150; k1 20, and k2 20.
The road surface is a natural changing condition for a vehicle.
For better riding comfort, a perfect road surface model is necessary
to design vehicle active suspension system. There are many possible ways to analytically describe the road inputs, which can be
classied as shock or vibration. Shocks are the singular disturbance
events of relatively short duration and big intensity, e.g., a pronounced bump or pothole on an otherwise smooth road. This singular disturbance events, such as bumps have a major inuence on
the ride safety of the vehicle as well as the perception of the driver
concerning tire comfort. Vibrations, on the other hand, are characterized by prolonged and constant excitations that are called
rough roads. Thus, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the
proposed feedback linearization design method, a vibration disturbance is taken into account. In this paper, the proposed controller
is tested for a road of the form of 3 Hz sine wave, and the sinusoidal
road input is formulated as zr t h sin6pt, where h 0:2 cm is
the amplitude of the vibration. For subsequent comparison, the following three systems are given respectively:
Table 1
The model parameters of active suspensions steup.
Parameter

Value

Parameter

Value

ms
mu

2:45 kg
1 kg
900 N/m
10 N/m
2 kg

kf
bf
be
bc
ms max

2500 N/m
1000 N s/m
8 N s/m
7 N s/m
3 kg

ks
ksn
ms min

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

2

Vertical displacements (m)

x 10

Vertical acceleration (m /s)

S1
S2
S3

S1
S2
S3

1.5

3
1
2
0.5

1
0

0.5

2
1
3
1.5

4
5

10

12

10

12

Time (Sec)

Time (Sec)

Fig. 5. Vertical acceleration.

Fig. 3. Displacement responses of the vertical motion.

Actuator forces (m)

S2
S3

suspension spaces (m)

x 10

S1
S2
S3

3
1

2
1

0
0
1

2
2

3
4

10

12

Time (Sec)

10

12

Time (Sec)
Fig. 4. Control input.
Fig. 6. Suspension spaces.

S1: Passive suspension systems.

S2: Active suspension systems with standard feedback linearization controller with all plant parameters are known.
S3: Active suspension systems with the proposed controller.

The root-mean-square (RMS) values are strictly related to the

ride comfort, which are often used to quantify the amount of acceleration transmitted to the vehicle body. The RMS value of variable
xt is calculated as

1.5

s
Z T
RMSx 1=T
xtT xtdt :

0.5

39

unsprung mass displacements (m)

x 10

S1
S2
S3

0.5

In our study, we choose T 12 s to calculated the RMS values of the

vertical displacement and acceleration for different cases.
The responses of the passive suspension system, active suspension system with the standard feedback linearization and active
suspension system with the proposed controller are compared in
Fig. 3. From the gure, we can see that the proposed controller
can reduce the disturbance effect compared with the passive system, which clearly shows that an improved ride comfort has been
achieved. Specially, there is nearly the same tracking performance

1
1.5
2

10

Time (Sec)
Fig. 7. The responses of unsprung mass displacement zu .

12

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H. Pan et al. / Mechatronics 30 (2015) 363370

between active suspension system with the proposed controller

and active suspension system with the standard feedback linearization controller, although there is minimal a priori information
of the plant. Compared with the other two systems, the vertical
displacement RMS improvement of system S3 reaches to 81.03%
and 16.21%, respectively. Fig. 4 is plotted to show the corresponding control input.
For vehicle suspension control, it is widely accepted that ride
comfort is closely related to the body acceleration, which requires
the designed controller has the ability to reduce the vertical acceleration of sprung mass. In Fig. 5, we can see that the designed system has the best disturbance isolation ability, for the reason that S3
has the least RMS value among the three systems, while the RMS
values are calculated as 1.0828, 0.2738 and 0.2663, respectively.
In the active suspension control, the limitation of the suspension space should be taken into account, which means the suspension working space must be preserved. It can been observed from
Fig. 6 that the controlled suspension spaces all fell into the acceptable ranges. The unsprung mass displacement is plotted in Fig. 7.
5. Conclusion and remarks
In this paper, a novel concept, namely, ESO-based feedback control, is successfully applied to solve the problems in active suspension systems with performance constraints. The attractiveness of
the controller results from its ability to actively estimate and compensate for the internal and external disturbances using the ESO
strategy, and reduce tracking error by the feedback control design.
Signicant tracking and disturbances rejection performance are
achieve. The proposed strategy requires minimal a priori information of the plant and the controller is easy to be implemented and
turned. The results obtained from hardware tests illustrated the
effectiveness of the proposed approach. In addition, the automotive industry provides customer-viable options of best-in-class
vehicles with all-round active suspension systems. The main
obstacle for commercialization of such systems is the signicant
power requirement [1]. Therefore, our future work is to analyse
or compare the power demand of the actuator, such as semi-active
pitch-plane Interconnected suspension systems in [2].
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (61333012), in part by the Self-Planned Task
(No. SKLRS201308B) of the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and
System (HIT), in part by the General Financial Grant from the China
Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2014M550190), and in part by
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,
China.
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