Fault-tolerant H∞ control for active suspension vehicle systems with actuator faults

This paper investigates the problem of fault-tolerant H∞ control for a class of quarter-car active suspension systems with actuator faults. The corresponding state-space form is established via taking into account the active suspension system performance: namely, ride comfort, road holding, suspension deflection, and maximum actuator force limitation for control strategy. Different from the traditional actuator model, in this paper, the actuator failures are modelled as random variables governed by a homogeneous Markov chain. A fault-tolerant H∞ controller is designed such that the resulting control system is reliable since it has the capability of guaranteeing asymptotic stability and H∞ performance, and simultaneously satisfying the constraint performance in the scenarios of three types of actuator failures. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller design methodology.