A New Kind of Self-coupled Electrorheological Damper and its Vibration Character

Abstract

The design and manufacture of a second-generation adaptive damper composed of an electrorheological (ER) fluid, and piezoelectric ceramics is presented in this paper. Compared with the first-generation dampers, there are three aspects of modification adopted in the design of this. These include (a) the number, mode of arrangement, and electrocircuit connecting style of piezoceramics, (b) load applying mechanism, and (c) hole-channel in the concentric cylinder electrode. The experiment conducted shows that the amplitude of frequency response function decreases drastically in the frequency range of 220-250 Hz under an exciting acceleration amplitude of 3.5 g (g the gravitational acceleration) and the resonance frequency moves from 198 to 208 Hz. The new damper excels the old one in antivibration performance. In the on-off state model, numerical simulations clearly show the vibration suppression effect of the damper. The design method of combining the ER fluid and the piezoelectric ceramic as a self-coupled system can be implemented extensively in other control systems, such as acoustic insulation and control.