Fuzzy control for MR damper in a driver's seat suspension

The paper concerns the application of fuzzy logic to the control of a magnetorheological fluid damper (MR damper) employed in a driver's seat support. The seat is modeled as a 1DOF system to which a generalized model of an MR damper valid for fluctuating magnetic fields is attached. The performance of the feedback system with a fuzzy controller is tested in computer simulations and compared with the performance of an open loop system and the feedback system with an on-off controller. The obtained results are verified in laboratory experiments. For this purpose, the on-off and fuzzy real-time controllers for the MR damper are developed in integrated design and control environment of MATLAB/Simulink. The advantages of fuzzy control are proved in experimental investigations.