Quasi-Static Modelling of a Full-Channel Effective Magnetorheological Damper with Trapezoidal Magnetic Rings

Abstract

Magnetorheological damper (MRD) has been successfully applied to vehicle suspension systems as an intelligent core component. Most conventional MRDs have closed rectangle-shaped magnetic circuits, resulting in a short effective working length and negligible damping force. To address the above issues, a novel full-channel effective MRD with trapezoidal magnetic rings (FEMRD_TMR) is proposed. The trapezoidal magnetic ring can shunt the magnetic circuit, distributing it evenly along the damping channel and increasing the effective working length. Additionally, which has the same variation trend as the magnetic flux through it, makes the magnetic induction intensity distribution more uniform to reduce the magnetic saturation problem. Theoretically analyzing the damping characteristics of the FEMRD_TMR, a quasi-static model is developed to forecast the output damping force. The structural design of MRD is challenging since conventional quasi-static models rely on the yield stress of magnetorheological fluid (MRF) to reflect the rheological property, which cannot be directly observed and is challenging to calculate. The Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy neural network and a unique magnetic circuit computation are offered as a novel quasi-static modeling approach to address the issue. The MRF’s yield stress is linearized into magnetic induction intensity functions by the T–S fuzzy neural network and then converted into the MRD’s structural size by the special magnetic circuit calculation. Therefore, the proposed quasi-static model can directly reflect the relationship between the damping force and structure size, simplifying MRD’s structure design. The novel quasi-static model is shown to be more straightforward and understandable than the conventional Bingham quasi-static model and to have approximately accurate damping force prediction when compared to experimental data.