Distributed Model Predictive Control and Implementation for Vehicle Active Suspensions

This paper proposes a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) method for a half-vehicle system with active suspensions. First, the half-vehicle system is divided into three subsystems to reduce the system dimension. Considering the distribution characteristics of suspension control systems, a DMPC controller is designed for each suspension subsystem in order to inhibit the vehicle vertical and pitch motion. To evaluate the proposed control system, controllers with low cost micro-control units (MCU) are implemented, where a fast MPC method for real-time optimization based on continuation/general minimum residual (C/GMRES) method is realized and in-vehicle network FlexRay is used to exchange control information among these controllers. Finally, the implementation of DMPC controllers in MCUs is finished and the results show that vehicle comfortability can be improved by the proposed controllers.