Development and simulation of magnetorheological damper for segment erector vibration control

Abstract

In this paper, magnetorheological dampers are applied to a segment erector to replace passive vibration dampers. Because magnetorheological damper dynamics are highly nonlinear, design of a direct control system is impossible. To apply linear control theory directly to design the magnetorheological damper controller, the Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy model analytically represents the segment erector model. In addition, a disturbance observer based on a Takagi–Sugeno fuzzy controller is proposed for this system. Both simulations and experiments validate the performance enhancement and stability of the controller. The results show that the acceleration of the segment erector was reduced by 59.6% and 32.1% in oblique wave excitation and random excitation, respectively, compared to a conventional passive damper. The proposed fuzzy controller and magnetorheological dampers have great potential in practical applications because they can significantly improve the performance of a segment erector.