Fault detection in automotive semi-active suspension: Experimental results

A proposal of fault detection using Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems is experimentally validated on embedded systems. The fault detection system is oriented to faulty sensors and / or actuators. The study case is a Quarter of Vehicle (QoV) with suspension using a controllable shock absorber which uses a SkyHook controller. The experimental testbed uses Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) to validate the approach. The HiL is an automotive Electronic Control Unit (ECU), and the QoV model is embedded in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Results exhibit the effectiveness of the approach which is consistent with numerical simulation. These results open the application of LPV approaches to commercial vehicles since it is easy of implementation for several features such as, low computation load, lumped parameter model and available for nonlinear dynamic systems.