Ride Quality Improvement in Passenger Cars Using Regenerative Dampers: A Field-Oriented Control Approach

This paper proposes the implementation of a regenerative damper and its control to attain comfort and handling improvements on a passenger car. In the past, numerous efforts have focused on the development of actuators able to harvest energy from suspension vibrations. However, less effort has been devoted to the development of suitable control strategies at the level of the electric motor that performs this energy conversion. To achieve this goal, a quarter-car model of the reference vehicle is simulated in a MATLAB/Simulink environment. We apply comfort- and handling-oriented strategies (skyhook and groundhook), as well as constant damping reproduction. The permanent-magnet synchronous machine inside the damper is modeled in dq axes and field-oriented control is implemented with field weakening using maximum torque per ampere and volt methods. This guarantees safe damping operation as speed escalates. It is demonstrated that the machine can fulfill the desired damping task within its operational limits.