Modeling and testing of a field-controllable magnetorheological fluid damper

In this study, an experimental and a theoretical study were carried out to predict the dynamic performance of a linear magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper. After having designed and fabricated the MR damper, its dynamic testing was performed on a mechanical type shock machine under sinusoidal excitation. A theoretical flow analysis was done based on the Bingham plastic constitutive model to predict the behavior of the prototyped MR damper. The theoretical results were then validated by comparing them against experimental data, and it was shown that the flow model can accurately capture the dynamic force range of the MR damper. In addition to the flow model, a modified parametric algebraic model was proposed to capture the hysteretic behavior of the MR damper. The superiority of the proposed modified model was shown by comparing it with the Alg model as well as with a widely adopted modified Bouc–Wen model through an error analysis. It is observed that although all the three models are comparable at the excitation velocities of 0.05, 0.10, and 0.15 m/s, the mAlg model is remarkably successful at the highest excitation velocity of 0.2 m/s over the other two. The improvements in the predictions were found to be over 50%, relative to unmodified model especially at lower current inputs. Therefore, it was concluded that the present flow model can be successfully adopted to design and predict the dynamic behavior of MR dampers, while the mAlg model can be used to develop more effective control algorithms for such devices.