IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO.
4, AUGUST 2018 1787
An Innovative Two-Layer Multiple-DOF Seat
Suspension for Vehicle Whole Body
Vibration Control
Donghong Ning, Haiping Du , Member, IEEE, Shuaishuai Sun,
Weihua Li , Member, IEEE, and Bangji Zhang
Abstract—This paper proposes an innovative two-layer
multiple-degree-of-freedom (multiple-DOF) seat suspension
for reducing the whole body vibration (WBV) of heavy-duty
vehicle drivers. This seat suspension is composed of a
bottom-layer suspension for vertical vibration control and
a top-layer suspension with two independently controlled
rotational DOFs. The proposed seat suspension can con-
trol the vibration of the driver’s body in five DOFs except
the yaw vibration, which has least effect on humans, with
only three actuators; though the five DOFs cannot be fully
reduced by the three actuators, all of their magnitudes can
be decreased. Another advantage of a two-layer structure is
that the vertical vibration reduction can be decoupled from
controlling the lateral trunk bending and forward flexion of
the driver’s body, because the fact that the most sensitive
frequency contents of the vertical vibration to human are
much higher than the frequency content of other four DOFs
vibrations. The top-layer suspension is tested then its ro-
tational stiffness and friction are identified. A decoupled
model is derived and used in order to design a controller
for the top-layer suspension. Experiments are implemented
where the random roll and pitch vibration with random ver-
tical vibration are exerted on the seat suspension base, re-
spectively. The results indicate that the interaction of the
Manuscript received February 28, 2017; revised July 16, 2017, Novem-
ber 11, 2017, and February 28, 2018; accepted May 6, 2018. Date of
publication May 16, 2018; date of current version August 14, 2018. Rec-
ommended by Technical Editor Liangyao Yu. This work was supported
in part by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding
scheme under Project LP160100132, in part by the University of Wol-
longong and China Scholarship Council joint scholarships under Grant
201306300043, and in part by the Open Research Fund Program of the
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle
Body, Hunan University under Grant 31515001. (Corresponding author:
Haiping Du.)
D. Ning is with the Automotive Research Institute, Hefei University of
Technology, Hefei 230000, China, and also with the School of Electrical,
Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Wollon-
gong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia (e-mail: dning@uow.edu.au).
H. Du is with the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunica-
tions Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522,
Australia (e-mail: hdu@uow.edu.au).
S. Sun and W. Li are with the School of Mechanical, Material, Mecha-
tronics and Biomedical Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollon-
gong, NSW 2522, Australia (e-mail: ss886@uowmail.edu.au; weihuali@
uow.edu.au).
B. Zhang is with the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and
Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha 410082,
China(e-mail: bangjizhang@hnu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMECH.2018.2837155
1083-4435 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
top-layer and the bottom-layer is small; with the proposed
multiple-DOF seat suspension, the WBV in five DOFs can
be reduced simultaneously.
Index Terms—Heavy-duty vehicles, multiple-degree-of-
freedom (multiple-DOF) seat suspension, vibration control,
whole body vibration.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE WHOLE body vibration (WBV) of heavy-duty ve-
T hicle drivers has been widely studied [1]–[4], where the
connection between long-term exposure to WBV and occupa-
tional health issue has been identified. Lower back pain, which
has been identified as one of the most burdening health prob-
lems [5], is linked with WBV exposure. In many industries,
WBV is hazardous to the employee’s health [6]. The WBV of
heavy haul trucks drivers’ in overburden mining poses an appre-
ciable health hazard [7]. The forestry skidder seats can amplify
the WBV accelerations occurring at the seat/operator interface
compared with the corresponding values of the chassis [8]. Jack
et al. [9] quantified the six-degree-of-freedom (six-DOF) WBV
exposure levels of skidders during routine field operating tasks,
and it was interesting to note that the operators who reported
low back pain and neck pain were those who experienced the
lateral trunk bending and forward flexion at the longest time;
among the three rotational vibrations, roll, pitch and yaw, the
yaw vibration has the smallest magnitude. All the studies have
confirmed that the WBV is hazardous to drivers’ health; in
heavy-duty vehicles, the magnitude of WBV is high, which has
not seen much improvement over the past two decades due to
the limited attention paid to the development of a multiple-DOF
seat suspension for WBV control.
Three types of single-DOF seat suspension have been exten-
sively studied: the passive, semiactive, and active seat suspen-
sions. For the passive seat suspension, which has been widely
applied in heavy-duty vehicles due to its low price, it is diffi-
cult to optimize its performance around the resonance frequency
[10]. The semiactive seat suspension can adjust its parameters
based on the vibration, where the electrorheological (ER) and
magnetorheological (MR) seat suspensions have been proposed
with tunable damping [11]–[13] and variable stiffness seat sus-
pensions have been proposed with MR elastomer [14], [15].
The active seat suspension designs have been proposed with
1788
different actuators. These include both rotary [16], [17] and lin-
ear actuators [18], [19]. The active seat suspension controller
and vehicle suspension controller have been extensively stud-
ied by considering practical applications, e.g., global chassis
control [20], actuator saturation [21], and optimal method [22].
Human body is much sensitive to vibrations of 4–8 Hz in the
vertical direction; thus, the finite frequency control is proposed
to greatly improve the active suspension performance [23], [24].
Several multiple-DOF seat suspensions have been reported. A
four-DOF spherical motion system has been applied in an ac-
tive seat suspension [25], which applied the actuators’ motion
to compensate longitudinal and lateral accelerations and vehi-
cle inclinations. The authors of [26] applied for a patent for a
six-DOF active seat suspension with six actuators distributed as
a Stewart platform. An active seat suspension with two DOFs
for military vehicles was proposed in order to control the verti-
cal and lateral vibrations [27]. A multiple-DOF seat suspension
with three parallel hydraulic actuators was designed for indepen-
dent control of vertical, horizontal, and pitch angle directions in
[28]. The main problems in the multiple-DOF seat suspension
design may be that the complicated structure will increase the
cost and need more space for assembling it in the vehicle; the
controlled multiple-DOF vibrations are coupled, but the sensi-
tive frequency contents of vibrations are different to the human
body in terms of different DOFs.
Although there are not many multiple-DOF seat suspensions
proposed, multiple-DOF vibration control is necessary in some
fields with stringent isolation requirements [29]. The first pre-
sented multiple-DOF active vibration control system was sup-
ported by National aeronautics and Space Administration in
1993 [30], [31]. A multiple-DOF vibration isolation system
with electromagnetic voice coil actuators in parallel with soft
springs was presented in [32] and [33]. The quasi-zero stiffness
magnetic levitation was applied in six-DOF vibration control
[34], [35]. The above-mentioned multiple-DOF vibration isola-
tion studies generally require the same number of actuators to be
applied to reduce the same number of DOFs of vibrations; they
are complicated in structure with high implementation cost,
and the control issue is also a big challenge due to the cou-
pled system dynamics. However, those studies will still benefit
the multiple-DOF seat suspension design. The multiple-DOF
sensing technology has been greatly improved with the recent
development in the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)
[36], [37], which make multiple-DOF vibration control imple-
mentable at a low price.
The WBV can be defined in six DOFs with three transla-
tional vibrations and three rotational ones. Generally, when the
vehicle chassis encounters roll or pitch vibrations, the lateral
trunk bending and forward flexion of the driver are generated;
the driver is exposed to two rotational and two translational vi-
brations. This is the reason why single-DOF seat suspension
cannot effectively control the WBV. The yaw vibration has less
effect on drivers’ comfort according to ISO 2631-1 [38] and
generally has the smallest magnitude among the three rotational
vibrations; thus, it may be considered to be neglected in order to
simplify the multiple-DOF seat suspension design. Thus, based
on previous studies [16], [17], a two-layer multiple-DOF seat
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018
suspension is designed and built in this paper, where a single-
DOF active seat suspension is connected with a newly designed
two-DOF suspension in serial. The single-DOF seat suspension
in [16] and [17] can be only used for vertical vibration although
it has advantages of concise structure, easy control, and low
cost with a rotary actuator. The two-DOF suspension has two
independent rotary DOFs, the roll and pitch, which can be used
to control the lateral trunk bending and forward flexion of the
driver’s body. Overall, this two-layer multiple-DOF seat suspen-
sion only uses three active actuators to reduce WBV of driver’s
body in five DOFs except the yaw vibration. Though the two
translational (longitudinal and lateral) DOFs of the WBV can-
not be independently controlled by three actuators, the WBV
magnitudes in all of fives DOFs can be reduced by the proposed
suspension. In this paper, the system design, parameter identifi-
cation, modeling, and controller design for this new seat suspen-
sion are presented, and both numerical simulations and experi-
ments are used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed seat
suspension.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows:
Section II presents the multiple-DOF seat suspension design and
prototype. Section III discusses the seat suspension parameter
identification. The controller design is presented in Section IV;
Section V presents the simulation and experiment results. Fi-
nally, Section VI presents the conclusions of this research.
II. MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION DESIGN
In this section, the WBV on heavy-duty vehicle drivers is
discussed, and then a multiple-DOF seat suspension with two
layers is proposed and manufactured.
A. Whole Body Vibration
Generally, the isolation of the vertical vibration, which is
proven to have the biggest vibration magnitude and affects
most drivers’ comfort in common passenger vehicles, is con-
sidered in designing seat suspension. When operating a heavy-
duty vehicle, the severe vibration caused by uneven roads and
the operation of machine tools for digging, dumping, shov-
eling, and loading are transferred to the seat; thus, the occu-
pant often experiences WBV. The WBV in terms of the body
frame x3 − y3 − z3 is defined as shown in Fig. 1, where the
three translational vibrations are along the x3 , y3 , and z3 axes;
the three rotational vibrations, which are also called roll, pitch,
and yaw motions, are around the three axes.
To evaluate human exposure to WBV in vehicles, ISO 2631-1
is always applied, which has defined methods for the measure-
ment of WBV and provides guidance on the possible effects of
vibration on health, comfort, perception, and motion sickness.
The effect of vibration on the driver’s health and ride comfort is
dependent on the vibration frequency. The frequency weighted
root mean square (FW-RMS) acceleration aw is determined by
  12

aw = (Wi ai ) 2
(1)
i
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL
Fig. 1. WBV of the seated human body.
where ai is the RMS acceleration for the ith one-third octave
band; Wi is the weighting factor given in ISO 2631-1.
The fourth power vibration dose value (VDV) is defined as
  14
T
4
VDVtotal = ∫ [aw (t)] dt . (2)
0
The VDV is more sensitive to vibration peaks than the RMS
method. Because the random test results are presented in this
paper, the FW-RMS method is applied to calculate the mean of
the vibration magnitude for evaluating WBV.
ISO 2631-1 has defined the evaluation way of the WBV’s
effects on driver comfort and perception; the six-DOF vibration
from seat surface can be defined as follows:
av = (kx 2 aw x 2 + ky 2 aw y 2 + kz 2 aw z 2 + kr x 2 aw r x 2
1 bration is not included considering the ISO 2631-1 evaluation
+ kr y 2 aw r y 2 + kr z 2 aw r z 2 ) 2
where aw x , aw y , and aw z are the FW-RMS accelerations
with respect to the x3 , y3 , and z3 axes, respectively;
aw r x , aw r y , and aw r z are FW-RMS rotational accelerations
with respect to the three axes, respectively; kx = 1, ky =
1, kz = 1, kr x = 0.63 m/rad, kr y = 0.4 m/rad, and kr z =
0.2 m/rad are multiplying factors defined by ISO 2631-1, which
indicate that the sensitivities of driver with WBV in six DOFs are
different. Among the three rotational accelerations, ar z has the
smallest multiplying factor; thus, it contributes least to the com-
bined six-DOF vibration av , which is applied to evaluate human
exposure to WBV. Based on the frequency-weighting curves for
single-DOF vibrations defined in ISO 2631-1, the driver’s com-
fort is affected most seriously by 5–8 Hz translational vibration
along the z3 -axis, 1–1.25 Hz translational vibration along the x3
and y3 axes, and 0.8 Hz rotational vibrations around three axes.
It can be seen that the most sensitive frequencies for humans
are close in terms of translational vibration along the x3 and y3
axes, and the three rotational vibrations, and the sensitive fre-
quencies of translational vibration along the z3 -axis are much
higher than vibrations in other DOFs. This means that when
designing a multiple-DOF seat suspension, the yaw vibration
control, which would have the least effect on ride comfort when
comparing with the omission of vibration control in other DOFs,
could be omitted in order to reduce the complexity of the seat
1789
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of a two-layer M-DOF seat suspension.
suspension design; the translational vibration along the z3 -axis
could be decoupled from other DOFs in order to simplify the
vibration control.
B. Multiple-DOF Seat Suspension for WBV Control
Although the driver is exposed to vibration in six DOFs for
heavy-duty vehicles, the seat suspension structure will be com-
plicated and the cost and energy consumption will be high if all
the vibrations are reduced. In this section, an innovative two-
layer multiple-DOF seat suspension with three active actuators
is proposed to reduce WBV in five DOFs where the yaw vi-
(3)
criteria, the possible complexity of the structure, and the imple-
mentation cost.
Fig. 2 shows the schematic diagram of the proposed two-
layer multiple-DOF seat suspension model. The bottom-layer
suspension is a single-DOF seat suspension with spring stiffness
ks , friction fr t , actuator output ub ; this suspension can isolate
vibration along the z-axes of the three coordinate frames. The
top-layer suspension has a two-DOF active joint, which can
rotate around the x2 and y2 axes (Fig. 2 shows the structure
in the y2 −z2 plane, which is the same in the x2 −z2 plane). In
the joint, there are friction torques fr r x and fr r y and actuator
output torques ur x and ur y . At the same time, the springs kt
will make the joint have rotary stiffness around the x2 and y2
axes. kc and cc are the stiffness and damping of the seat cushion,
respectively. The coordinate frame 3 is in the center of gravity
of the driver body mass. Hb is the distance between coordinate
frame 3 and coordinate frame 2; Hs is the distance between
coordinate frame 2 and coordinate frame 1.
The cab floor transfers multiple-DOF vibrations to the seat
suspension. The proposed seat suspension can isolate those vi-
brations transferred to driver body in five DOFs except the yaw
vibration. The effectiveness of the bottom-layer suspension in
translational vibration control along the z3 -axis has been exten-
sively validated in single-DOF active seat suspension studies,
so, it is not further explained in this paper. When a roll vibration
1790
Fig. 3. Seat suspension with roll vibration. (a) Single-DOF seat sus-
pension. (b) Multiple-DOF seat suspension with rotational angle com-
pensation. (c) Multiple-DOF seat suspension with translational distance
compensation.
TABLE I
DRIVER BODY MOVEMENT WITH ROLL VIBRATION
rx1 is exerted on the seat base, a translational vibration along the
y3 -axis and a rotational vibration around the x3 -axis rx3 are both
generated. Based on ISO 2631-1, the most sensitive frequencies
for humans are close in terms of translational vibration along
the y3 -axis, and the roll vibration rx3 ; thus, the low frequency
of roll vibration input deteriorates driver comfort seriously in
two DOFs. With the proposed multiple-DOF seat suspension,
an active torque can be exerted on the x2 -axis, which can reduce
vibration in those two DOFs. A similar situation exists in pitch
vibration input.
For further illustration of the vibration isolation concept of
the proposed seat suspension, a roll vibration excitation rx1 is
taken as an example, as shown in Fig. 3. It is assumed that, in
the equilibrium position, the distances of the driver body mass
center (coordinate frame 3) to the cab floor (coordinate frame
1) are equal in both the proposed multiple-DOF seat suspension
and the traditional single-DOF one, which do not have a two-
DOF rotational joint. It can be seen from Fig. 3(a) that, when
the single-DOF seat is applied with a roll vibration angle θ,
the driver’s body will have an equal roll vibration angle θ, and
its mass center will have a horizontal translation of L1 . By
controlling the joint of the multiple-DOF seat suspension, the
rotational angle and the translational distance of the driver’s
body can be compensated, respectively.
Table I shows the results of the rotational angle compensation
and the translational distance compensation methods compared
with the single-DOF seat. By controlling one rotary DOF, two
DOFs motions of driver body can be reduced in both compen-
sation ways because the translational distance and rotational
angle are both decreased; thus, the driver’s body suffers less
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018
Fig. 4. M-DOF seat suspension prototype.
translational and rotational vibrations than with the single-DOF
seat. Combining with the bottom-layer suspension control, the
proposed two-layer seat suspension is able to isolate transla-
tional vibrations along the x3 , y3 and z3 axes, and rotational
vibrations of roll rx3 and pitch ry 3 by controlling three active
actuators, that is, the WBV of the driver’s body can be reduced
in five DOFs. The results also show the translational vibration
along y3 and rotational vibration rx3 cannot be simultaneously
reduced to zero, which means that the five DOFs vibrations
cannot be independently reduced by only three active actuators.
C. Multiple-DOF Seat Suspension Prototype
A multiple-DOF seat suspension prototype has been built
based on the concept analysis of the last section, as shown in
Fig. 4. In our previous work, a single-DOF active seat suspen-
sion with rotary motor has been developed [16], [17], which
is adopted as the bottom-layer suspension of the multiple-DOF
seat suspension. The top-layer suspension is mounted on the
top of the bottom-layer suspension; its main part is a two-DOF
rotary joint, as shown in Fig. 5; the joint consists of a seat mount
plate, which will be fixed with a seat, and two drive shafts; the
seat mount plate is assembled with the drive shaft in roll with a
bearing and connecting shaft, and this means that the drive shaft
in pitch can exert a force on the lower part of the seat mount
plate to make it rotate around the y2 -axis (the connecting shaft).
At the same time, the drive shaft in roll can rotate the seat mount
plate around the x2 -axis.
Fig. 6 shows the layout of the top-layer suspension, where
there are four springs assembled in the four corners of the
bottom-layer suspension providing rotary stiffness. The actu-
ators are composed of rotary motors and planetary gear reduc-
ers, where the planetary gear reducers are applied to amplify
torque output of the motors to reduce the requirement of the
motor’s rated torque output and also reduce the actuator cost. In
this paper, for the top-layer suspension, Panasonic servo motors
(MSMJ042G1U) with 1.3 Nm rated torque output and gear
reducers with ratio 40:1 are used; thus, the rated torque output
of the actuators can reach 52 Nm.
III. PARAMETERS IDENTIFICATION OF
TOP-LAYER SUSPENSION
In this section, the top-layer of the multiple-DOF seat suspen-
sion prototype is tested. Based on the test results, the top-layer
suspension parameters are also identified.
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL 1791

Fig. 7. Top-layer suspension test system.

B. Test Results and Parameters Identification

The two-DOF joint is designed to be controlled indepen-
dently for the two rotational DOFs. The two actuators can
drive the seat mount plate, where the seat is fixed, to move
according to the designed sinusoidal profile. For roll (rx2 ) and
pitch (ry 3 ) movements, frequency-dependent and amplitude-
dependent tests were conducted, respectively. The measured
torque T of the actuator (amplified by its gear reducer) is de-
fined as
T = kr (θ − θbias ) + fr r (4)
where kr is the rotary stiffness determined by the four corner
springs that need to be identified in each tested rotary DOF; θ is
Fig. 5. Two-DOF rotary joint. (a) Design. (b) Prototype. the real rotary angle obtained from the encoder; θbias is a small
initial bias of the rotary angle caused by the imperfection of the
manufactured prototype, which should be zero ideally; and fr r
is the friction torque generated by gear reducer and the joint. A
simplified friction model is applied in this paper as
⎧  
⎪
⎨ Fr r sign θ̇ , θ̇ > δ
fr r = (5)
⎪
⎩
Fr r θ̇δ , θ̇ < δ

where δ > 0 is a small rotary velocity boundary for the direction

Fig. 6. Top-layer suspension layout.
A. Test System
For identifying the parameters of the top-layer suspension, a
test system has been built, as shown in Fig. 7, where a Com-
pactRio 9074 is applied to send desired motor motion profile
to the motor drive and receive feedback signals. The rotational
angle of the motor can be accurately controlled by its drive.
The encoder in the motor can feedback the real rotational an-
gle, and the real torque output of the motor can be also sent to
CompactRio 9074 by its drive.
switching of the friction; Fr r is the Coulomb friction parameter.
It can be seen from (4) that the measured torque depends on the
suspension spring torque and friction torque.
The test results in roll and pitch directions are shown in
Figs. 8 and 9, respectively, where the upper platform of the
suspension is forced to do sinusoidal rotation with different am-
plitudes (3° and 5°) and frequencies (0.1 and 0.5 Hz). When
the same amplitude rotations are implemented, the torque out-
puts of the actuators are nearly overlapped with different fre-
quencies in both DOFs. In each direction, when rotations with
different amplitudes are implemented, the slope rates of the
torque-rotation angle curves are very close, but when compar-
ing the two directions, the slope rates of the torque-rotation angle
curves are different. The results indicate that the rotary stiffness
in the two directions is different. The identified model parame-
ters are shown in Table II. Fig. 10 shows the comparison between
the simulation and experimental results in roll direction. In pitch
1792
Fig. 8. Roll test of the top-layer. (a) With 3° amplitude. (b) With 5°
amplitude.
direction, the simulation and experimental results also show
good agreement. The comparison results indicate that the iden-
tified parameters can be applied to describe the dynamic char-
acteristics of the designed top-layer suspension. It is also seen
from Table II that the rotary stiffness in the roll direction is
higher than it in the pitch direction.
IV. SYSTEM MODELING AND CONTROLLER DESIGN
In this section, a simplified decoupled model is derived for
the top-layer suspension and used for controller design.
A. Decoupled Model
Benefiting from the two-layer structure, the control of the
three actuators has very few interactions as validated in the next
section; the two DOFs of the top-layer suspension joint can
be controlled independently; thus, their controllers can be sepa-
rately designed. The system analysis of the y − z plane is similar
to the x − z plane; thus, only the model of y − z plane is built
and simulated in this paper. For designing the two controllers for
the rotary joint, the model of the multiple-DOF seat suspension
can be decoupled and simplified with the following assumptions.
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018
Fig. 9. Pitch test of the top-layer. (a) With 3° amplitude. (b) With 5°
amplitude.
TABLE II
PARAMETERS IDENTIFICATION
Assumption 1: The seat cushion and driver body are assumed
to be one rigid body, because the stiffness and damping of the
cushion are normally much higher than seat suspension, and
then the system model is simplified.
Assumption 2: When the system is in the equilibrium posi-
tion, the z-axis of the three coordinate frames is on a line.
Assumption 3: Only roll vibration (rx1 ) is fed into the sys-
tem; the bottom-layer suspension is working in passive way.
Fig. 11 shows the analysis of the bottom-layer where x1 −
y1 − z1 is the fixed reference frame and it is coincident with the
center of the seat suspension base; x2 − y2 − z2 is the frame
in the two-DOF joint and fixed with the top of the bottom-
layer; Hs (t) (Hs is applied in the following for simplification)
is the distance between the two coordinate frames; α is the roll
vibration angle; m is the mass of the bottom-layer top; and P
and N are the reaction forces of the top-layer along y2 and z2
axes, respectively.
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL 1793

Fig. 12. Analysis of the top-layer.

Then, the coordinate of joint (frame 2) in the reference frame

1 is defined as
y21 = −Hs sinα (7)
z21 = Hs cosα. (8)
Their acceleration in refenence frame 1 can be obtained with
double derivative
   
ÿ21 = − Ḧs − Hs α̇2 sinα + −2Ḣs α̇ − Hs α̈ cosα (9)

Fig. 10. Torque comparison in roll direction. (a) Frequency 0.1 Hz,
amplitude 5◦ . (b) Frequency 0.5 Hz, amplitude 5◦ .
Fig. 11. Analysis of the bottom-layer.
Hs is calculated by the bottom-layer’s dynamics
m Ḧs = ks (l0 − Hs ) − mg cosα − fr t
+ ub − N + mα̇2 (Hs − Hl ) (6)
which includes spring force, gravity, friction, active force, reac-
tion force, and centrifugal force; l0 is the distance between the
origins of the two frames when the spring is in free length; Hl
is the distance between the mass center of bottom-layer top and
the origin of frame 2.
z̈21 = Ḧs − Hs α̇2 cosα + −2Ḣs α̇ − Hs α̈ sinα. (10)
Fig. 12 shows the analysis of the top-layer, where x3 − y3 −
z3 is a frame fixed on the center of driver body mass, θ is the
rotation angle of frame 3 in terms of the reference frame 1, and
θ − α is the relative rotation angle of the top-layer.
The accelerations of driver body along the y3 and z3 axes are
ÿ33 = −Hb θ̈ + ÿ21 cos θ + z̈21 sin θ (11)
z̈33 = −θ̇2 Hb − ÿ21 sin θ + z̈21 cos θ. (12)
The suspension performance can be evaluated by ÿ33 , z̈33 , and
θ̈.
Summing the forces of the top-layer along the y3 -axis, we
can get the following equation:
N sin (θ − α) + P cos (θ − α) − M g sin θ = M ÿ33 . (13)
To get rid of the unknown forces P and N terms in the above
equation, sum the moments about the centroid of the driver body
I θ̈ = [N sin (θ − α) + P cos (θ − α)]
× Hb − kr (θ − α) − fr r + ur (14)
where ur is the control torque; I is the rotatinal inertia of the
driver body around the x3 -axis.
Thus, the decoupled model in the y–z plane is
 
I + M Hb 2 θ̈ = − kr (θ − α) − fr r + ur + Hb M g sin θ
+ M Hb ÿ21 cos θ + M Hb z̈21 sin θ. (15)
The model illustrates that the coupling term between rota-
tional and vertical vibrations is M Hb z̈21 sinθ, which has a low
1794 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018

In order to reduce the roll and lateral vibrations, a disturbance

observer based sliding mode controller [39] is applied to control
the roll movement of the driver’s body by tracking the desired
roll angle of the driver’s body θd , which is equal to zero in this
paper.
The disturbance observer is designed as
q̇ = k0 (−f (θ) − ur ) − k0 dˆ (22)

dˆ = q + k0 J θ̇ (23)

where q is an auxiliary variable, dˆ is the estimated disturbance,

and k0 is the observer gain to be designed.
Because the disturbance varies slowly relative to the observer
Fig. 13. Anlysis of the single-DOF seat. dynamics, it is reasonable to assume that d˙ = 0; by defining the
estimation error as d˜ = d − d;ˆ thus
magnitude considering that the rotary angle θ should be in a  
˙ ˙ ˙
small limited range. In particular, when θ is controlled to be in a d˜ = d˙ − dˆ = −dˆ = − q̇ − k0 J θ̈ = − k0 (−f (θ) − ur ) − k0 dˆ
smaller value, the coupling between the rotational and vertical
˜
− k0 (f (θ) + ur + d) = −k0 d. (24)
vibrations are becoming weaker.
Now, N is still required to be calculated in order to obtain ˙
Hs . Therefore, the dynamic of the driver body along the z3 -axis The equation of estimation error is obtained as d˜ + k0 d˜ = 0,
is derived and we can get

N cos (θ−α)−P sin (θ − α) − M g cos θ − M θ̇2 Hb = M z̈33 . d˜ (t) = d˜ (t0 ) e−k 0 t . (25)
(16) Hence, if k0 > 0, the observer is exponentially stable with
Combining with (13), thus, convergence rate k0 .
  Define tracking error as
N = M z̈33 + M g cos θ + M θ̇2 Hb cos (θ − α)
  e = θd − θ. (26)
+ M ÿ33 + M g sin θ sin (θ − α) . (17)
The sliding variable is defined as
The analysis of single-DOF seat suspension is shown in
Fig. 13, where Hc is the distance between frame 1 and frame 3; s = ce + ė (27)
the whole weight of the seat-body system is the same with the where c > 0.
multiple-DOF seat suspension. Similar with the bottom-layer of The sliding mode controller with disturbance compensation
the multiple-DOF seat, Hc is decided by is proposed as
 
(m + M ) Ḧc = ks (l0 + Hb − Hc ) − (M + m) gcosα − fr t f (θ) dˆ
ur = J − − + cė + θ̈d + k1 s + ηsgn (s) . (28)
+ ub + (M + m) α̇2 Hc . (18) J J
Thus
The acceleration of driver body along the y3 and z3 axes are
ṡ = cė + ë
derived as
1
ÿ33 = −2Ḣc α̇ − Hc α̈ (19) = cė + θ̈d − (f (θ) + ur + d)
J
z̈33 = Ḧc − Hc α̇2 . (20) 1
= − d˜ − k1 s − ηsgn (s) . (29)
The roll acceleration of the driver body is equal to the roll J
vibration input acceleration α̈. Considering the Lyapunov function as
1 2 1 ˜2
B. Controller Design V = s + d . (30)
2 2
The top-layer model (15) is rewritten as So, its derivative is
J θ̈ = f (θ) + ur + d (21) ˙
V̇ = sṡ + d˜d˜
where J = I + M Hb 2 ; the known nonlinear term f (θ) =  
1˜
−kr θ + Hb M g sin θ + M Hb z̈21 sin θ, in which z̈21 can be eas- = s − d − k1 s − ηsgn (s) − k0 d˜2
J
ily measured and θ can be estimated by a MEMS sensor; the
unknown disturbance d = −fr r + kr α + M Hb ÿ21 cos θ + Δ is 1˜
= −k1 s2 − k0 d˜2 − η |s| − ds. (31)
assumed to be bounded including model uncertainty Δ. J
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL 1795

TABLE III
SIMULATION PARAMETERS

1 ˜
When η ≥ J |dm ax |, V̇ ≤ −k1 s2 − k0 d˜2 ≤ 0 Fig. 14. Body rotational acceleration around the x3 -axis.

V̇ ≤ −k1 s − k0 d˜2
2

 
1 2 1 ˜2
≤ −k2 s + d = −k2 V (32)
2 2
where k2 = 2 min{k1 , k0 }
Thus
V̇ ≤ −k2 V. (33)
This implies
V (t) ≤ V (t0 ) e−k 2 (t−t 0 ) . (34)
Hence, if 2k1 ≥ k2 > 0, the observer is exponentially stable
with convergence rate k2 .
By selecting appropriate c, k0 , k1 , and η, the disturbance ob-
server based sliding mode control can be applied for the control Fig. 15. Body translational acceleration along the y 3 axis.
of top-layer of the proposed seat suspension. In addition, the
switching action can be implemented with a saturation function y3 -axis is also controlled, as shown in Fig. 15. In both seats,
to solve the chattering problem. body accelerations along the z3 -axis are very small, which in-
dicate that, with the rotational vibration, the body translational
V. PERFORMANCE VALIDATION vibration along the z3 -axis has been affected very little. The
In this section, the simulation result with the designed simulation results indicate that, when only roll vibration (rx1 )
controller is presented. To validate the effectiveness of the is applied to the seat suspension, for the single-DOF seat sus-
multiple-DOF seat suspension prototype in suppressing vibra- pension, the rotational acceleration will all be transmitted to the
tions in multiple DOFs experimentally, the prototype is tested human body and a big mangitude translational vibration along
on a six-DOF vibration platform. The random roll and pitch the y3 -axis will also be introduced. With the proposed multiple-
vibration with random vertical vibration test results are shown DOF seat suspension, the rotational and translational vibration
and discussed. can be controlled simultaneously.

A. Simulation B. Experimental Setup

Table III shows the model parameters in the simulation. The
friction model (5) is also applied for the bottom-layer suspen-
sion friction. The controller is designed as c = 1, k0 = 1, k1 =
10, η = 1.2. For analyzing the transient response of the top-
layer controller around the resonance frequency, a rotational vi-
bration similar to a bump vibration profile is implemented. The
rotational vibration is defined as α = Am sin(2πf t + 32 π) +
Am , where the amplitude Am = 1 ◦ (about 0.0175 rad), fre-
quency f = 1 Hz and time t is from 0 to 1 s.
The body roll (rx3 ) acceleration is shown in Fig. 14, where
the rotational acceleration is greatly reduced with the multiple-
DOF seat. At the same time, the body acceleration along the
The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 16, where the
multiple-DOF seat suspension is fixed on the top of a six-DOF
vibration platform, which can simulate vibration situation in
six DOFs. A 45 kg mass is loaded on the seat to simulate the
driver body mass. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor
(XSENS) is attached to the seat surface to record the multiple
DOFs vibration. The location of sensors is shown in Fig. 4;
the MEMS sensor (MPU9250) is attached to the center of the
multiple-DOF seat suspension upper platform; an accelerome-
ter (ADXL 203EB) and a laser displacement sensor (optoNCDT
1302) are applied for bottom-layer control, which has been an-
alyzed in [16]. MPU 9250 is a low-cost IMU that contains a
1796
Fig. 16. Experiment setup.
Fig. 17. Experiment system.
three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, and a three-
axis digital compass. First, the calibration techniques in [40]
have been implemented to deal with the sensor errors like bias,
scale factor and nonorthogonality. Then, with the calibrated
data, the rotary angles of the seat suspension’s base and top
platform are estimated based on an orientation filter in [41]. The
measured rotary rates from the gyroscope and the estimated
rotary angles are applied for the proposed controller.
Fig. 17 shows the whole experiment system, where the six-
DOF vibration platform is controlled by a CompactRio 9076; the
multiple-DOF seat suspension is controlled by a CompactRio
9074, which can get the vibration signals of the seat. The de-
signed controller calculates the desired torques according to the
feedback signals and sends it to the corresponding drive of the
motors on the suspension. Then the actuators produce corre-
sponding torques. Two computers are applied to log data and
send commends to CompactRio 9074 and 9076.
In this paper, two sets of vibrations are applied, the random
roll vibration with random vertical vibration and the random
pitch vibration with random vertical vibration. The vibration
signals recorded by an XSENS sensor are used to evaluate
the control performance. For validating the effectiveness of the
multiple-DOF seat suspension and investigating the interaction
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018
Fig. 18. z-axis acceleration of seat surface.
Fig. 19. y-axis acceleration of seat surface.
between the top-layer and bottom-layer control, three kinds of
experiments have been implemented with each set of vibra-
tion, the bottom-layer and top-layer are both uncontrolled, the
bottom-layer is controlled and top-layer is uncontrolled, and the
bottom-layer and top-layer are both controlled.
C. Random Vibration Test
When the six-DOF vibration platform generates a random
roll vibration with random vertical vibration, several DOFs vi-
brations of the seat surface are generated. Fig. 18 shows the
comparison of the z-axis acceleration of the seat surface, where
when the bottom-layer suspension is controlled, the vibration
magnitude is reduced obviously no matter whether the top-layer
is controlled. The y-axis acceleration of the seat surface is shown
in Fig. 19, where when the top-layer suspension is controlled,
the y-axis acceleration is reduced; a similar result is shown in
Fig. 20, which shows roll accelerations. The results indicate that
the interaction between the top-layer control and bottom-layer
control is very small.
Table IV shows the FW-RMS values of the test results, from
which it can be seen that when only the bottom-layer is con-
trolled, the z-axis FW-RMS acceleration of the seat surface is
reduced by 30.3%, but the values of the other two DOFs vibra-
tions caused by the roll vibration are close with the uncontrolled
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL
Fig. 20. Roll acceleration of seat surface.
TABLE IV
FW-RMS ACCELERATION OF SEAT SURFACE WITH ROLL AND
VERTICAL VIBRATIONS
Fig. 21. Roll acceleration magnitude in the frequency domain.
case; when the multiple-DOF seat suspension is fully controlled,
the FW-RMS value of the z-axis acceleration, the y-axis accel-
eration, and roll acceleration are reduced by 29.8%, 41.1%, and
47.5%, respectively, and the magnitude of WBV is reduced by
41.4%.
The random roll vibration has been applied to the mathemat-
ical model in the simulation. By fast Fourier transform (FFT),
the roll acceleration magnitudes of the uncontrolled seat in the
simulation and experiment have been achieved in Fig. 21, which
showed a reasonably good agreement; their resonance frequen-
cies are all around 1 Hz.
Similarly, the pitch and vertical vibration test results are an-
alyzed in Table V. When only the bottom-layer is controlled,
though the z-axis FW-RMS acceleration is reduced by 27.1%,
the WBV is only reduced 12.6%; when the multiple-DOF seat
1797
TABLE V
FW-RMS ACCELERATION OF SEAT SURFACE WITH PITCH AND VERTICAL
VIBRATIONS
suspension is fully controlled, the FW-RMS value of the z-axis
acceleration, the x-axis acceleration, and pitch acceleration are
reduced by 26.7%, 46.2%, and 53.3%, respectively, and the
magnitude of WBV is reduced by 44.3%.
The ISO 2631 has defined the comfort categories accord-
ing to the vibration magnitudes as “not uncomfortable,” “a lit-
tle uncomfortable,” “fairly uncomfortable,” “uncomfortable,”
“very uncomfortable,” and “extremely uncomfortable.” In the
experiments, when the multiple-DOF seat suspension is fully
controlled, the comfort categories in terms of the translational
vibrations generated by rotation vibrations are both changed
from “uncomfortable” to “a little uncomfortable,” which im-
proved two levels; when considering the WBV, the comfort
categories are varied from “uncomfortable” to “fairly uncom-
fortable” with one level improvement. The results indicate that
the bottom-layer controlled seat suspension can greatly decrease
the vertical vibration magnitude; while when the multiple-DOF
vibration is exerted, it contributes little to the improvement of
WBV. However, the fully controlled multiply-DOF seat suspen-
sion can greatly reduce the WBV and improve the ride comfort.
In the bottom controlled case, reductions of the two acceler-
ations caused by rotary vibration are very small; it implies that
the control interaction between the top-layer and bottom-layer
is weak; thus, their controllers can be designed independently
for simplification.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed an innovative two-layer multiple-
DOF seat suspension design for heavy-duty vehicles. In order
to decrease system complexity, this seat suspension is designed
to reduce five DOFs of WBV with three actuators. The advan-
tage of the two-layer seat suspension is that the sensitive fre-
quency content of human to the four DOFs vibration controlled
by the top-layer is around 1 Hz, while the sensitive frequency
content of human body to vibration controlled by the bottom-
layer is between 5 and 8 Hz; this kind of decoupling will benefit
the controller design. The seat suspension structure is concise
and it causes only a small volume increase compared with the
single-DOF seat suspension. For the controller design of the
top-layer suspension, a decoupled model is derived to simplify
the modeling complexity; then, a sliding mode controller with
a disturbance observer is designed. Both simulation and exper-
imental results show great improvement of the WBV control
performance. When the fully controlled two-layer seat suspen-
sion is applied, the WBV can be reduced by 41.4% and 44.3%
with the two sets of vibration applied in this paper, respectively.
1798 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, AUGUST 2018
This multiple-DOF seat suspension will improve the driver’s
work condition and is practical in application.
Future studies will include the optimization of the top-layer
suspension structure and parameters, the complete model build-
ing for both layers of the suspension together, and the corre-
sponding control strategy development.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the help of
Dr. M. S. Cincotta in the final language editing of this paper.
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Donghong Ning received the Ph.D. degree in
mechatronics from the University of Wollongong,
Wollongong, NSW, Australia, in 2018.
He is currently working as an Associate
Research Fellow at the School of Electri-
cal, Computer and Telecommunications Engi-
neering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong,
NSW, Australia. His research interests include
seat suspension vibration control and multiple
degrees-of-freedom vibration control.
NING et al.: INNOVATIVE TWO-LAYER MULTIPLE-DOF SEAT SUSPENSION FOR VEHICLE WHOLE BODY VIBRATION CONTROL
Shuaishuai Sun received the Ph.D. degree in
mechatronics from the University of Wollongong,
NSW, Australia, in 2016.
He is currently working as a Research Fellow
at University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW,
Australia. He has published more than 40 jour-
nal articles in his research field. His research
interests include self-sensing, self-power MR
devices, smart materials and structures, innova-
tive actuators for locomotive robot, and vibration
control.
Haiping Du (M’09–SM’17) received the Ph.D.
degree in mechanical design and theory
from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai,
China, in 2002.
He is currently a Professor in the School of
Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications
Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollon-
gong, NSW, Australia. He is a Subject Editor of
the Journal of Franklin Institute, an Editorial Ad-
visory Board Member of the Journal of Sound
and Vibration, and an Associate Editor of IEEE
Control Systems Society Conference.
1799
Weihua Li (M’15) received the Ph.D. degree in
mechatronics from Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity, Singapore, in 2001.
He has been with the School of Mechanical,
Materials and Mechatronic Engineering, Univer-
sity of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia,
as a Lecturer (2003–2005), a Senior Lecturer
(2006–2009), an Associate Professor (2010–
2012), and a Professor since 2012. He serves
as an Associate Editor and an Editorial Board
Member for nine international journals.
Bangji Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in
mechanical from Hunan University, Hunan,
China, in 2010.
From 2013 to 2014, he was a Visitor Scholar
with the University of Technology, Sydney. He is
currently a Professor at the College of Mechan-
ical and Vehicle Engineering, Hunan University,
Changsha, China, and a Research Fellow at the
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and
Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan Univer-
sity, Changsha, China.