Patent ID: 7406372

Claim:
A method for controlling a variable damper in a vehicle, comprising the steps of: (a) detecting vehicle body accelerations of selected three points among front right, front left, rear right and rear left; (b) calculating vehicle body acceleration of the remaining one point among front right, front left, rear right and rear left based on the detected vehicle body accelerations of the selected points according to a geometric rule; (c) calculating vehicle body vertical velocities by filtering the vehicle body accelerations to eliminate DC offsets therefrom and integrating the filtered accelerations; (d) detecting accelerations of front right/left vehicle wheels; (e) calculating front wheel vertical velocities by filtering the detected accelerations of the front right/left wheels to eliminate DC offsets therefrom and integrating the filtered accelerations; (f) calculating accelerations of rear wheels by time delaying the accelerations of the front wheels by a time interval taken while a road input to the front wheel is delivered to the rear wheel at a vehicle speed; (g) calculating damper velocities based on the calculated vehicle body vertical velocities and the calculated vehicle wheel vertical velocities; (h) eliminating high frequency components from bounce, roll and pitch velocities for the respective vehicle body vertical velocities calculated in steps (a) to (c); (i) calculating control values for the bounce, roll and pitch velocities by multiplying the bounce, roll and pitch velocities by the vehicle speed and road conditions; (j) distributing the control values for the bounce, roll and pitch velocities to the four dampers to calculate control values for the respective dampers according to a gain; (k) determining the control values for the respective dampers based on the damper velocities and the control values for the respective dampers and then providing the control values to the dampers only when the dampers are extended and the vehicle body is thus raised or when the dampers are compressed and the vehicle body is thus lowered.