On the control of the friction force

This paper tackles the problem of controlling the Coulomb friction force in order to achieve damping characteristics which can be advantageous in engineering applications, particularly in the area of vibration control, for example, vehicle suspensions, rotating machinery foundations or earthquake protection systems. The control schemes employed belong to the family of variable structure controllers (VSC), a class of robust control algorithms, namely sliding mode control (SMC) and switched state feedback (SSF). The schemes perform force tracking control, aiming at making the friction force track a reference force in order to reduce the acceleration experienced by a suspended mass. The plant investigated is a 2-degree of freedom system and in this study represents a quarter car. The controller performances are investigated both numerically and experimentally.