Design, Analysis, and Experimental Evaluation of a Magnetorheological Damper With Meandering Magnetic Circuit

This paper presents a novel magnetorheological (MR) damper with a meandering magnetic circuit, referred to as MMCMRD, to improve the damping force performance of an MR damper. The magnetic flux path of the MMCMRD is guided by magnetically conductive and non-magnetically conductive elements. A theoretical model of the MMCMRD is built, and a finite-element analysis is performed to verify the principle of the MMCMRD. The damping force characteristics of the MMCMRD are experimentally tested on a hydraulic vibration system and compared with the theoretical results. The experimental results show that the controllable damping force of the MMCMRD under an excitation velocity of 0.0628 m/s is as high as 3400 N, which is considerably higher than that of the traditional MR damper. The equivalent damping and damping coefficient of the MMCMRD are both larger than those of the traditional MR damper when the input current exceeds 0.75 A. The research results show that the principle of the MMCMRD can improve the efficiency of the MR damper, and the damping force performance of the MMCMRD is accurately described by the theoretical model.