Comparative Study of Magnetorheological Damper Models for Force Tracking

Author(s):  
Anria Strydom ◽  
Werner Scholtz ◽  
Schalk Els

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers are controllable semi-active dampers capable of providing a range of continuous damping settings. MR dampers are often incorporated in suspension systems of vehicles where conflicting damping characteristics are required for favorable ride comfort and handling behavior. For control applications the damper controller determines the required damper current in order to track the desired damping force, often by using a suitable MR damper model. In order to utilise the fast switching time capability of MR dampers, a model that can be used to directly calculate damper current is desired. Unfortunately few such models exist and other methods, which often negatively affect the computational efficiency of the model, need to be used when implementing these models. In this paper a selection of MR damper models are developed and evaluated for both accuracy and computational efficiency while tracking a desired damping force. The Kwok model is identified as a suitable candidate for the intended suspension control application.

2021 ◽  
pp. 107754632110388
Author(s):  
Hongwei Lu ◽  
Zhifei Zhang ◽  
Yansong He ◽  
Zhi Li ◽  
Jujiang Xie ◽  
...  

The realization of the desired damping characteristics based on magnetorheological (MR) dampers is important for semi-active control and useful for the matching process of suspension damper. To reduce the cost of the control system and improve the output accuracy of the desired damping force, this study proposes an open-loop control method featuring an accurate inverse model of the MR damper and a tripolar current driver. The reversible sigmoid model is used to accurately and quickly calculate the desired current. Furthermore, the change characteristic of the desired current is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, which shows that the desired current needs to change suddenly to make the actual damping force velocity curve quickly approach the desired one. To meet the demand of the desired current, a tripolar current driver controlled by an improved PI control algorithm is proposed, which is with fast response and low noise. Finally, the bench test verifies that the control system can achieve different desired damping characteristics well, and the inherent error in this process is explained through the gap between the available damping force area and the desired damping characteristic curve and the crossover phenomenon of the dynamic characteristic curves of the MR damper.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (16) ◽  
pp. 5586
Author(s):  
Bo-Gyu Kim ◽  
Dal-Seong Yoon ◽  
Gi-Woo Kim ◽  
Seung-Bok Choi ◽  
Aditya Suryadi Tan ◽  
...  

In this study, a new class of magnetorheological (MR) damper, which can realize desired damping force at both low and high speeds of vehicle suspension systems, is proposed and its salient characteristics are shown through computer simulations. Unlike conventional MR dampers, the proposed MR damper has a specific pole shape function and therefore the damping coefficient is changed by varying the effective area of the main orifice. In addition, by controlling the opening or closing the bypass orifice, the drastic change of the damping coefficient is realizable. After briefly describing the operating principle, a mathematical modeling is performed considering the pole shape function which is a key feature of the proposed MR damper. Then, the field-dependent damping force and piston velocity-dependent characteristics are presented followed by an example on how to achieve desired damping force characteristics by changing the damping coefficient and slope breaking point which represents the bilinear damping property.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhizhen Dong ◽  
Zhimin Feng ◽  
Yuehua Chen ◽  
Kefan Yu ◽  
Gang Zhang

The consistency of magnetic flux density of damping gap (CMDG) represents the balancing magnetic flux density in each damping gap of magnetorheological (MR) dampers. It can make influences on the performances of MR dampers and the accuracy of relevant objective functions. In order to improve the mechanical performances of the MR damper with a two-stage coil, the function for calculating CMDG needs to be found. By establishing an equivalent magnetic circuit model of the MR damper, the CMDG function is derived. Then, the multiobjective optimization function and the working flow of optimal design are presented by combining the parallel-plate model of the MR damper with the function posed before. Taking the damping force, the dynamic range, the response time, and the CMDG as the optimization objective, and the external geometric dimensions of the SG-MRD60 damper as the bound variable, this paper optimizes the internal geometric dimensions of MR damper by using a NSGA-III algorithm on the PlatEMO platform. The results show that the obtained scheme in Pareto-optimal solutions has existed with better performance than that of SG-MRD60 scheme. According to the results of the finite element analysis, the multiobjective optimization design including the CMDG function can improve the uniformity of magnetic flux density of the MR damper in damping gap, which meets the requirements of manufacture and application.


Author(s):  
R.B. Soujanya ◽  
D.D. Jebaseelan ◽  
S. Kannan

Passenger’s comfort in moving vehicles depends on the quality of the ride. The major cause of discomfort is the vibration transmitted to passengers due to the road irregularities. For a comfortable ride on a vehicle, vibration must stay within prescribed standards. In the present work, an attempt was made to show that, the vibrations can be limited with the use of Magneto-rheological (MR) dampers for varying road profiles than the passive damping methods. MR dampers are semi-active control devices that use MR fluids to produce controllable damping force as they are known to exhibit nonlinear behaviour. Multi body dynamic studies were done to study the response of the system using a quarter car model. In this paper, passive damping (viscous damping) was considered at natural frequency of 1.012Hz, the response of damping was observed after 10s and the acceleration was found to be 6m/s2. When MR damper is employed as the magnetic force increases, the response of the damping was better than the passive damping, at 1.2A it comes down to 0.55m/s2, and the vibration gets dampened after 1.75s. Hence, from this study it is concluded that the MR damper can be employed in automobile for better ride comfort.


2014 ◽  
Vol 663 ◽  
pp. 158-162
Author(s):  
Alif Zulfakar bin Pokaad ◽  
Md Radzai bin Said ◽  
Fauzi bin Ahmad ◽  
Mohd Nazeri Kamaruddin

This paper focuses on the design of the control structure which consists of inner loop controller employed for MR damper under impact loading by using computer simulation. The simulation is done by using MATLAB 7.0. The structure of the inner loop control for the proposed MR damper model uses a simple PI control to achieve the desired force. In this simulation, the MR damper model that has been validated with the experimental result is used to simulate the actual force that produced by MR damper. The performance of inner loop controller to track the actual force produced by MR damper by obtaining the several input functions which are half wave of sinusoidal, saw-tooth, square and random functions of desired force with the variation in pendulum mass of 15 kg and 20 kg are investigated. It can be seen clearly that under several input functions, the proposed polynomial model with PI controller has the good ability to track the desired damping force under impact loading.


2011 ◽  
Vol 311-313 ◽  
pp. 2286-2290
Author(s):  
Jie Lai Chen ◽  
Xue Zheng Jiang ◽  
Ning Xu

The focus of this study is to experimentally investigate a semi-active magneto-rheological (MR) damper for a passenger vehicle, by using a quarter car models. After verifying that the damping force of the MR damper can be continuously tuned by the intensity of the magnetic field, a full-scale two-degree of freedom quarter car experimental set up is constructed to study the vehicle suspension. On-off skyhook controller is employed to achieve the desired damping force. The experimental results show that the semi-active vehicle suspension vibration control system based on MR dampers is feasible and can effectively improve ride comfort of vehicle.


Author(s):  
S. Siva Kumar ◽  
K.S. Raj Kumar ◽  
Navaneet Kumar

Magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper has been designed, fabricated and tested to find the stiffness and damping characteristics. Experimentally the MR damper has been tested to analyse the behaviour of MR fluid as well as to obtain the stiffness for varying magnetic field. MR damper mathematical model has been developed for evaluating dynamic response for experimentally obtained parameters. The experimental results show that the increase of applied electric current in the MR damper, the damping force will increase remarkably up to the saturation value of current. The numerical simulation results that stiffness of the MR damper can be varied with the current value and increase the damping forces with the reduced amplitude of excitation. Experimental and theoretical results of the MR damper characteristics demonstrate that the developed MR damper can be used for vibration isolation and suppression.


Author(s):  
Gaoyu Liu ◽  
Fei Gao ◽  
Wei-Hsin Liao

Abstract Due to low power consumption and fast response, magnetorheological (MR) dampers are widely used in various engineering applications. To enhance the performances, efforts have been made to increase the field dependent force with the same power consumption. However, the fluid viscous force is also increased significantly, which is undesirable in practical use. To tackle this problem, the focus of this paper is to design and test a new MR damper with micro-grooves for performance enhancement. First, the detailed design of the proposed MR damper is provided. A prototype of the new MR damper is fabricated. Silicon steel circular rings with thickness of 0.25 mm are installed around the damper piston to form two-layer micro-grooves. Experimental results of the two MR dampers without and with micro-grooves are then compared. The advantages of MR damper with micro-grooves over the one without micro-grooves are validated. The damping force and controllable force range of MR damper with micro-grooves are larger than the one without micro-grooves. When designing MR damper, making micro-grooves can also decrease the increment of fluid viscous force while keeping the same increase of field dependent force. With micro-grooves, the field dependent force is increased by 92.7% with the same power consumption, while the fluid viscous force is increased by 43%.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4099
Author(s):  
Quoc-Duy Bui ◽  
Quoc Hung Nguyen ◽  
Tan Tien Nguyen ◽  
Duc-Dai Mai

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers have been widely investigated and proposed for vibration mitigation systems because they possess continuous variability of damping coefficient in response to different operating conditions. In the conventional design of MR dampers, a separate controller and power supply are required, causing an increment of complexity and cost, which are not suitable for home appliances like washing machines. To solve these issues and to reuse wasted energy from vibration of washing machines, in this study, a self-powered shear-mode MR damper, which integrates MR damping and energy-harvesting technologies into a single device, is proposed. The MR damper is composed of an inner housing, on which magnetic coils are wound directly, and an outer housing for covering and creating a closed magnetic circuit of the damper. The gap between the inner housing and the moving shaft is filled with MR fluid to produce the damping force. The energy-harvesting part consists of permanent magnets fastened together on the shaft and induction coils wound directly on slots of the housing. The induced power from the induction coils is directly applied to the excitation coils of the damping part to generate a corresponding damping force against the vibration. In order to achieve optimal geometry of the self-powered MR damper, an optimization for both the damping part and the energy harvesting part of the proposed dampers are conducted based on ANSYS finite element analysis. From optimal solutions, a prototype of the proposed damper is designed in detail, manufactured, and experimentally validated.


Author(s):  
R. Scott Pierce ◽  
Caleb Whitener ◽  
Sudhir Kaul

This paper presents experimental results from the testing of a semi-active damping system in an off-road bicycle (bike). Magnetorheological dampers are being increasingly used in automotive applications to enhance damping capability of a suspension system or to mitigate the trade-off between ride comfort and handling. A magnetorheological (MR) damper requires a relatively low amount of energy to control damping characteristics, and behaves as a passive damper in the absence of any power input. This study investigates the use of a semi-active magnetorheological damper for the rear suspension of a mountain bike. The performance of this damper has been compared to the current shock absorber on the bike. All testing has been performed on a shaker table and the performance of the damper has been evaluated by comparing the input acceleration at the hub of the rear wheel to the acceleration at the seat of the bike. The main aim of this study is to investigate the viability of using an MR damper in a mountain bike suspension system. Test results indicate that the performance of the semi-active MR damper is comparable to the current shock absorber. Furthermore, the MR damper lends itself to hands-off control that will be investigated in a future study. Therefore, it can be concluded from preliminary testing that an MR damper can be used in a mountain bike to effectively control damping.


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