The quarter car test rig is designed and constructed for testing the performance of a vehicle active suspension system. The performance of the optimal variable structure controller is tested to compare with those of a passive suspension system and the simulation result. The dynamic characteristics of the PCV(pressure control valve) is tested, and based on this result, the lead compensator is designed for reducing the dynamic effects of the PCV. The performance of an active suspension system with the compensator gives almost that of an ideal active suspension system. From the frequency response analysis of which input is a white noise, the active suspension system shows the better performance than a passive suspension system around 1Hz which is the natural frequency of the sprung mass.

A vehicle suspension system performs two functions, the ride quality and the stability, which conflict with each other. Among the various suspension systems, an active suspension system has an external energy source, from which energy is always supplied to the system for continuous control of vehicle motion. In the process of the linearization for the nonlinear active suspension system, the frequency dependent damping method is used for the exact modelling to the real model. The pressure control valve which is controlled by proportional solenoid is the most important component in the active suspension system. The pressure control valve has the dynamic characteristics with 1st order delay. Therefore, It's necessary to adopt the lead compensator to compensate the dynamics of the pressure control valve. The sampling time is also important factor for the control performances. The sampling time value is proposed to satisfy the system performances. After the modelling and simulation for the pressure control valve and vehicle dynamic, the performances of the vehicle ride quality and the stability are enhanced.

An active suspension system has an external energy source, from which energy is constantly supplied to the system for continuous control of the vehicle's motion. There are some control strategies. In the study, the reduced-order active suspension control strategy via the singular perturbation technique is applied to the half car model which has 4 DOF. The performance of the hydraulic active suspension system utilizing this control strategy is investigated and compared with those of the systems with the full-order state feedback control and the sky-hook damping control. Their performances are compared through the computer simulation in the time and the frequency responses, respectively. In the transient response analysis, the C-language program is used, and Matlab program tool is used in the frequency response analysis. It is shown that the reduced-order control strategy yields almost the same performance as that of the full-order state feedback control, and gives better performance than that of the sky-hook damping control, especially in ride quality.