Modeling and Vibration Control of a Three-Degree-of-Freedom Electrically Interconnected Seat Suspension System for Heavy-Duty Vehicle

The whole body vibration (WBV) experienced by heavy vehicle drivers during work can harm their health. This article proposes a novel electrically interconnected seat suspension (EISS) for mitigating the drivers’ WBV. The EISS consists of two springs and two electromagnetic dampers (EMDs) connected through an electrical network. The same and opposite motion of two EMDs can adjust the three degrees of freedom (three-DOF) vibration of the sprung mass. The dynamic analysis of EISS shows that the three-DOF vibration of sprung mass can be divided into two almost decoupled groups which are controlled by the output force and torque of EISS, respectively. The sliding mode controller and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H_{\infty}$</tex-math></inline-formula> controller with disturbance observer are designed to calculate the ideal torque and force for controlling the two groups. A semiactive control strategy is adopted to track the ideal force and torque. Moreover, an experimental system is developed to verify the dynamic model’s correctness and the control method’s effectiveness. Under random excitation, compared to the traditional single-DOF seat suspension (SSS), the WBV of EISS decreased by 11.71%, and the comfort of the drivers has been improved. The proposed EISS in this article has great potential in practical applications.