Abstract
In this paper an optimal suspension system with preview of the road input is synthesized for a half tracked vehicle. The main goal of this research is to improve the ride comfort characteristics of a fast moving tracked vehicle in order to maintain an operator's driving capability. Several different kinds of preview control algorithms are evaluated with active or semi-active suspension systems. The road information estimated from the motion of the 1st road-wheel is enough to make the best use of the preview control algorithm in the case of tracked vehicles. The ride-comfort characteristics of a tracked vehicle are more dependent on pitching angular acceleration than heaving acceleration. Therefore, to reduce the pitching motion further, one needs to design the suspension system combined with hard side suspensions and soft middle suspensions. The simulation results show that the performance of sky-hook algorithms for ride comfort nearly follow those of full state feedback algorithms.