Magneto-Rheological (MR) Valve for Use in Hydro-Pneumatic Suspensions

Author(s):  
Jacob F. Grobler ◽  
Schalk Els

The suspension design requirements for vehicles that need both good on-road and off-road capabilities as well as vehicles where the payload changes significantly during operation is quite challenging. To overcome the ride comfort vs. handling compromise that most vehicles suffer from some suspension systems offer adjustability and control to overcome this conflict. The uptake of controllable dampers on commercial vehicles, allthough cost effective and technically feasible, have been low mainly because dampers on their own cannot significantly reduce the compromises involved with fully laden vs. empty or on-road vs. off-road use. The University of Pretoria developed a Four State Semi-Active Suspension System (4S4) that allows for the control and adjustability of the stiffness and the damping of the suspension. The 4S4 makes use of solenoid valves of which the response time unfortunately increases with an increase in flow, especially when implemented on larger vehicles, reducing the effectiveness of the control. This paper presents an alternative to the solenoid valves currently used in the 4S4 in the form of a magneto-Rheological (MR) valve that acts as a normal continuously variable MR damper, but also has the ability to virtually block the flow of fluid, thus switching between the two different spring characteristics. Experimental results show that it is indeed possible to replace the solenoid valves with a MR valve.

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.


Author(s):  
Amit Shukla ◽  
Jeong Hoi Koo

Nonlinear active suspension systems are very popular in the automotive applications. They include nonlinear stiffness and nonlinear damping elements. One of the types of damping element is a magneto-rheological fluid based damper which is receiving increased attention in the applications to the automotive suspension systems. Latest trends in suspension systems also include electronically controlled systems which provide advanced system performance and integration with various processes to improve vehicle ride comfort, handling and stability. A control bifurcation of a nonlinear system typically occurs when its linear approximation loses stabilizability. These control bifurcations are different from the classical bifurcation where qualitative stability of the equilibrium point changes. Any nonlinear control system can also exhibit control bifurcations. In this paper, control bifurcations of the nonlinear active suspension system, modeled as a two degree of freedom system, are analyzed. It is shown that the system looses stability via Hopf bifurcation. Parametric control bifurcation analysis is conducted and results presented to highlight the significance of the design of control system for nonlinear active suspension system. A framework for the design of feedback using the parametric analysis for the control bifurcations is proposed and illustrated for the nonlinear active suspension system.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mat Hussin Ab Talib ◽  
Intan Zaurah Mat Darus

This paper presents a new approach for intelligent fuzzy logic (IFL) controller tuning via firefly algorithm (FA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) for a semi-active (SA) suspension system using a magneto-rheological (MR) damper. The SA suspension system’s mathematical model is established based on quarter vehicles. The MR damper is used to change a conventional damper system to an intelligent damper. It contains a magnetic polarizable particle suspended in a liquid form. The Bouc–Wen model of a MR damper is used to determine the required damping force based on force–displacement and force–velocity characteristics. The performance of the IFL controller optimized by FA and PSO is investigated for control of a MR damper system. The gain scaling of the IFL controller is optimized using FA and PSO techniques in order to achieve the lowest mean square error (MSE) of the system response. The performance of the proposed controllers is then compared with an uncontrolled system in terms of body displacement, body acceleration, suspension deflection, and tire deflection. Two bump disturbance signals and sinusoidal signals are implemented into the system. The simulation results demonstrate that the PSO-tuned IFL exhibits an improvement in ride comfort and has the smallest MSE for acceleration analysis. In addition, the FA-tuned IFL has been proven better than IFL–PSO and uncontrolled systems for both road profile conditions in terms of displacement analysis.


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.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Osama Bedair

This paper describes economical strategy for design of industrial electrical substations and control buildings. Limited literature addressed design aspects for this class of buildings. Furthermore, little guidelines are available in practice to regulate this type of steel construction.  The first part of the paper overviews the architectural and structural layouts of various industrial buildings. The economical aspects and cost savings resulting in using mobile buildings are discussed. The paper also highlights the engineering challenges that are encountered in the design of mobile facilities. The transportation procedure and design requirements are briefly described. Recommendations are provided to compute the combined center of mass of the building and interior equipments. Effective analysis procedure is also described. The proposed design concept for mobile industrial buildings is cost effective and can be implemented in industry to reduce projects cost.


1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (4) ◽  
pp. 498-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Hac´ ◽  
I. Youn

Several control laws for active and semi-active suspension based on a linear half car model are derived and investigated. The strategies proposed take full advantage of the fact that the road input to the rear wheels is a delayed version of that to the front wheels, which in turn can be obtained either from the measurements of the front wheels and body motions or by direct preview of road irregularities if preview sensors are available. The suspension systems are optimized with respect to ride comfort, road holding and suspension rattle space as expressed by the mean-square-values of body acceleration (including effects of heave and pitch), tire deflections and front and rear suspension travels. The optimal control laws that minimize the given performance index and include passivity constraints in the semi-active case are derived using calculus of variation. The optimal semi-active suspension becomes piecewise linear, varying between passive and fully active system and combinations of them. The performances of active and semi-active systems with and without preview were evaluated by numerical simulation in the time and frequency domains. The results show that incorporation of time delay between the front and rear axles in controller design improves the dynamic behavior of the rear axle and control of body pitch motion, while additional preview improves front wheel dynamics and body heave.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 1439-1445
Author(s):  
Xinna Ma ◽  
Shaopu Yang ◽  
Wenrui Shi

With running speed increases, the dynamics characteristic of railway vehicle system behaves intensively, such as, snaking motion, bifurcation problem, even digression accident. These questions effect ride comfort and run stationary. The magneto-rheological (MR) damper can continually change its state in a few milliseconds and has low energy requirement and insensitivity to the temperature and circumstance. MR dampers have turned out to be a promising device in vibration control. According to the nonlinear of MR damper and the vibration characteristic of semi-active suspension of high-speed vehicle, a seventeen-degree-of-freedom lateral semi-control model of high-speed whole vehicle with MR dampers is established. Taking into account of the vibrations of vehicle and electromagnetic interference, a novel adaptive fuzzy control strategy is put forward. The simulation results show that adaptive fuzzy control method can improve the ride comfort and restrain electromagnetic interference. The electromagnetic interference noise problems in high-speed railway vehicle system with MRD are analyzed and discussed according to EN 55022 for the first time.


Symmetry ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1286
Author(s):  
Ayman Aljarbouh ◽  
Muhammad Fayaz

Rigorous model-based design and control for intelligent vehicle suspension systems play an important role in providing better driving characteristics such as passenger comfort and road-holding capability. This paper investigates a new technique for modelling, simulation and control of semi-active suspension systems supporting both ride comfort and road-holding driving characteristics and implements the technique in accordance with the functional mock-up interface standard FMI 2.0. Firstly, we provide a control-oriented hybrid model of a quarter car semi-active suspension system. The resulting quarter car hybrid model is used to develop a sliding mode controller that supports both ride comfort and road-holding capability. Both the hybrid model and controller are then implemented conforming to the functional mock-up interface standard FMI 2.0. The aim of the FMI-based implementation is to serve as a portable test bench for control applications of vehicle suspension systems. It fully supports the exchange of the suspension system components as functional mock-up units (FMUs) among different modelling and simulation platforms, which allows re-usability and facilitates the interoperation and integration of the suspension system components with embedded software components. The concepts are validated with simulation results throughout the paper.


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