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Electromagnetic Suspension System: Circuit and Simulation

Article  in  International Journal of Modeling and Optimization · January 2013

DOI: 10.7763/IJMO.2013.V3.316

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 Electromagnetic Suspension System: Circuit and
Simulation
Suleiman Abu-Ein, and Sayel M. Fayyad
Department Of Mechanical Engineering,
Faculty Of Engineering Technology,
P.O. Box 15008, Jordan, Al-Balqa Applied University Amman-Jordan

Abstract—This paper aims to construct a control
system for suspension system in automobiles. The
implementation technology of the controllers and the
subsequent experimental study are used. The present
work aims to develop an active, safe, and driving
pleasure, and keeping vehicle occupants comfortable
and reasonably well isolated from road noise, bumps,
and vibrations. software enables the modeling and
dynamic simulation of the control system. A simulation
and analytical methodologies are used here to analyze
the suspension system. It is found that active
suspension system improves ride comfort even at
resonant frequency. For step input of 0.08 m, the
sprung mass displacement has been reduced by 25 %
which shows the improvement in ride comfort and
sprung mass acceleration reduced by 89.93% .The
suspension travel has been reduced by 74.64% and tire
deflection has reduced by 89.73% .
Index Terms—Automobiles, Control Systems, Electromagnetic.
Suspension Systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
Suspension system had been used since the ancient Egyptians
in their carriages and horse drawn vehicles in the form of leaf
springs. By the early 19th century, most British horse
carriages were equipped with springs; wooden springs in the
case of light one-horse vehicles to avoid taxation, and steel
springs in larger vehicles. Automobiles were initially
developed as self-propelled versions of horse drawn vehicles.
However, horse drawn vehicles where these parts was Slung
to the carriage body using leather straps which is attached to
four posts of the chassis that looked like upturned table. Since
the carriage body was suspended from the chassis, the system
came to be known as a "suspension".
Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller has been
developed. Fig.1. The Ziegler – Nichols tuning rules are used
to determine proportional gain, reset rate and derivative time
of PID controller. The experimental investigations on the
performance of the developed active suspension control are
demonstrated through comparative simulations [2],[5].
Fig. 1. Active suspension system
-Materials and Methods
- Electro-Magnetic Suspension System :
A new type of car suspension is being developed .they
are replacing the spring and damper system used in all
vehicles today with linear electromagnetic motors controlled
by microprocessors and special mathematical equations.
Electromagnetic suspension works by constantly sensing
changes in the road surface and feeding that information, via
the ECU, to the outlying components. These components then
act upon the system to modify its character, adjusting shock
stiffness, spring rate and the like, to improve ride
performance, drivability,responsiveness. The ECU collects,
analyzes and interprets the data in approximately 10
milliseconds. the force is produced by a moving linear
electromagnetic field acting on conductors that maintain a
sort of electromagnetic equilibrium with the others to carry
the vehicle’s weight, while maintaining the desired body
attitude. At the same time, each electromagnetic linear
Actuator serves as its own shock absorber, eliminating the
need for yet another traditional suspension component. In
other words, each electromagnetic actuator acts as both a
spring (with variable-rate damping characteristics) and a
variable –rate shock absorber. Fully active suspensions use
electronic monitoring of vehicle conditions, coupled with the
means to impact vehicle suspension and behavior in real time
to directly control the motion of the car. Thus, if one uses, for
instance, frameless, permanent magnet, three phase,
brush-less servo motors in place of traditional shocks, then the
system must include extremely complex servo control
algorithms and super quick sending and receiving of signals
throughout the vehicle, so that the linear motors react
instantaneously to driving conditions that change constantly,
Fig.2.

Fig. 2. Electro-magnetic Suspension System
The equation of the PID controller is :
(1)
Where u is the measured process variable, r the reference
variable, u is the control signal and e is the control error e =
usp-u. The reference variable is often called the set point. The
control signal is thus a sum of three terms: the P term (which
is proportional to the error E), the I term (which is
proportional to the integral of the error E), and the D term
(which is proportional to the derivative of the error E). The
controller parameters are proportional gain integral time
Ti , and derivative time Td . The integral, proportional and
derivative part can be interpreted as control actions based on
the past, the present and the future respectively [4].
Fig. 3 shows both active and passive suspension systems.
Fig.3. Active and passive suspension systems
Fig. 4 shows the control loop for the active suspension system
.where Zr represents the road input which is considered as
disturbance signal .This loop is used to find the car body
displacement.
Fig. 4 Car body displacement
Fig.5 shows the Control circuit used in this work.
Fig.5. Control diagram for suspension system
The circuit diagram of a digital control system is shown in
Fig. 6 . A PIC16F877 microcontroller is to be used as the
digital controller in this system. Assume that the set-point
input s is to be hard-coded to the program, and the output y is
analog and connected to A/D channel AN0 (bit 0 of port A) of
the microcontroller. The microcontroller is assumed to
operate with a crystal frequency of 4MHz as shown in the
figure. The output (port B) of the microcontroller is interfaced
to a D/A converter which acts as a zero-order-hold and
generates an analog output to drive the plant, [4].
Fig.6. Circuit diagram of the microcontroller
The microcontroller is connected to OSC1 and OSC2
inputs. With a 4MHz crystal, the basic clock rate of the
microcontroller is 1μs (the crystal frequency is divided by 4 to
obtain the basic timing rate). The analog output of the plant
(y) is connected to A/D converter channel AN0 of the
microcontroller. Similarly, port B digital outputs of the
microcontroller are connected to an AD7302 type D/A
converter. The operation of this D/A converter is very simple.
Digital data is applied to eight inputs D0–D7, while the write
control input, WR, is at logic high. The analog data appears at
the output after the WR input is lowered to logic low. The WR
input of the D/A converter is controlled from port pin RC0 of
the microcontroller. The D/A converter is set to operate with a
full-scale reference voltage of +5V. The resolution of the
converter is 8 bits, i.e. there are 256 quantization levels. With
a full-scale reference voltage of +5V, the resolution is
5000/256 = 19.53mV, i.e. the digital bit pattern ‘00000001’
corresponds to 19.53mV, the bit pattern ‘00000010’
corresponds to 2 × 19.53 = 39.06mV and so on.
- Integral wind-up of the PID controller vertical displacement, m ., Zus : unsprung mass vertical
In practical applications the output value of a control action is displacement, m .
limited by physical constraints. For example, the maximum
voltage output from the DAC is limited. Similarly, The In order to find the transfer functions we have to find the
energizing of the linear motor is limited by its own flux time following terms
constant. As a result of this physical limitation, the error
signal does not return to zero and the integral term keeps
adding up continuously. This effect is called integral wind-up
(or integral saturation), and as a result of it long periods of
overshoot can occur in the plant response. Many techniques
have been developed to eliminate integral wind-up from the
PID controllers, and some of the popular ones are as follows:
a) Stop the integral summation when saturation occurs.
This is also called conditional integration. The idea Using the super position principle we set first and
is to set the integrator input to zero if the controller find the first (3) terms (1, 2, and 3).
output is saturated and the input and output are of
the same sign. Then we set and find the rest terms (4, 5, and 6).
b) Fix the limits of the integral term between a minimum The First matrix to find first three terms:-
and a maximum.
c) Reduce the integrator input by some constant if the
controller output is saturated. Usually the integral
value is decreased by an amount proportional to the
difference between the unsaturated and saturated
(i.e maximum) controller output. = (6)
2) The derivative kicks of the PID controller
Another possible problem when using PID controllers is Deter =
caused by the derivative action of the controller. This may ( ) (
happen when the set-point changes sharply, causing the error
signal to change suddenly. Under such a condition, the (7)
derivative term can give the output a kick, known as a
derivative kick. But this does not exist in our case since the
set point is kept fixed.

-system analysis (8)

Active suspension systems employ Electromagnetic linear

motor, which provide the desired force in the suspension
system. Hence, clearly external force is introduced into the = (9)
system by the means of hydraulic actuator. For active
suspension shown in Fig. 3. using the Newton’s second law of
motion and free-body diagram concept, the following
equations of motion are derived. (10)

-For sprung mass :

= (11)
(2)
-For un-sprung mass
(12)
(3)
Taking Laplace transform for the equations of active
suspension
(13)
From the Second matrix we find the rest:-
(4)

(5)
Where:
(14)
Ca: damping coefficient = 1000 N s/m, ks : spring stiffness
=18600 N/m., kt : tire stiffness = 196000 N/m., Ms: quarter
car sprung mass =250 kg ., Mus : unsprung mass = 50 kg ., F = (15)
: actuator force (N) ., Zr : road profile, m ., Zs : sprung mass
 riding comfort than active suspension system. We can also
notice that the oscillation of active suspension system is less
(16) than passive system and settling time is also less.

= (17)

(18)
The final T.F.

We have chosen a linear motor with the following

parameters :
Air gap = 3 mm
Force / current gain factor = 90 N/A
Magnitude of electromagnetic negative stiffness =
350 N/mm
Eddy current time constant = 3 ms
Coil time constant = 85 ms
Total flux lag time constant = 88 ms
Coil resistance = 0.8 Ω

Hence, the transfer function will be as the following
equation :
II. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
-Step Input
Fig. 7 shows the peak overshoot of sprung mass displacement
for passive system is .127 m where as for the active
suspension system it is .086 m. Reduction in peak value =
(passive value – active value) / passive value = 32.3% .
Fig.7. Sprung Mass acceleration for active and passive
Fig. 8. shows the maximum tire deflection for passive system
is 0.03246m where as for the active suspension system it is
0.0033 m. Reduction in peak value = 90% . This is an
indication on consumption or the depreciation of the tires. We
can conclude that the life of the tires on the active suspension
system is more than passive system .

Fig.8. Maximum tire deflection.

Fig.6. Peak overshoot of sprung mass displacement for passive system.

Fig.7 shows the peak overshoot of sprung mass acceleration

for passive system is17.99 m/s2 where as for the active
suspension system it is 1.81 m/s2. Reduction in peak value =
89.9% ,which indicates that the active suspension has more
 II. CONCLUSIONS [6] H. Julian, “An Introduction to Modern
1) In this paper, a PID controller including active Vehicle Design”, Butterworth-Heinemann , 2001.
dynamics has been designed for a quarter car model
of a passenger car to improve the ride comfort and [7] E. Jack, “AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY ”,
road holding ability. A SYSTEMS APPROACH, Delmar, Cengage
2) It is also found that active suspension system Learning , 2004.
improves ride comfort even at resonant frequency.
3) For step input the of 0.08 m, the sprung mass [8] W. Jiabin, W. Weiya, A. Kais and H. David,
displacement has been reduced by 25 % which "DESIGN OF LINEAR PERMANENT
shows the improvement in ride comfort and sprung MAGNET MOTOR FOR ACTIVE VEHICLE
mass acceleration reduced by 89.93% .The SUSPENSION" , Department of Electronic and
suspension travel has been reduced by 74.64% and Electrical Engineering, the University of Sheffield.
tire deflection has reduced by 89.73% .
4) For the real application in vehicles, the proposed [9] PIC16F877, Data Sheet, 1998 Microchip
active suspension structure Technology Inc.
faces inevitably some challenges including the cost,
the required space in vehicle and power [10] E. James, “Modern auto mechanics ”, the
consumption Good Heart well-willcox company, Inc.
5) The addition of dampers and springs also adds a Publisher .Neil Stuart Mclagan“Control of an
certain manner of safety to the system to keep the Electromagnetic vehicle Suspension, 2008.
vehicle safe when the system fails due to any
reasons.
Although not as widely used as electronic leveling or
adaptive suspension systems, electromagnetic active
suspensions are sure to become more common Dr. Suleiman Q. Abu-Ein, Prof.
associate, mechanical
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