Practical hysteresis model for magnetorheological dampers

Abstract

The magnetorheological dampers have been extensively studied given their benefits such as fail-safe manner, low power requirements, relative fast response, and large force capacity and robustness. To take advantage of this remarkable device, a good model is required to accurately and effectively predict the real-time damping force in magnetorheological damper in order to apply the appropriate control actions to improve the response of the structural system. In this article, a new practical model is proposed to better characterize the hysteresis phenomenon in magnetorheological dampers. The model considers the displacement, velocity, and acceleration excitations as well as the current excitation as input variables and includes a reduced number of constant parameters to be determined. Since the displacement, velocity, and acceleration variables can be obtained in real time from adequate sensors, it is easy and practical to predict the current excitation required to generate the specific hysteresis force. The hysteresis damping forces predicted by the proposed model are validated with those experimentally obtained for different current, amplitude, and frequency of excitation, and a very good correlation has been observed.