AN H-2 FORMULATION FOR THE DESIGN OF A PASSIVE VIBRATION-ISOLATION SYSTEM FOR CARS

Optimal design of an active suspension system for road vehicles can be solved using LQR techniques. Such a problem is equivalent, in the fre quency domain, to determine the state feedback gain matrix that minimi zes the H-2 norm of a suitable transfer matrix. A passive suspension s ystem can be seen as the physical realization of a suitable state feed back law whose gains are function of the system parameters. This law, and thus the characteristic elements of the passive suspension, can be determined as an approximation of the H-2 optimal solution. This meth odology allows one to choose the best controller from a constrained su bset (i.e., all possible passive suspensions of a particular form) of all possible controllers.