An Improved Polynomial Dynamic Model of a Magnetorheological

Fluid Damper under Impact Loadings

Zhaochun Lia,b, Jiajia Zhengb, Jeong Hoi Kooc, Jiong Wang*b
a
College of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China
210037; bSchool of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology,
Nanjing, China 210094; cDep. of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Miami University,
Oxford, Ohio, USA

ABSTRACT

With fast response time and adjustable damping properties, magnetorheological (MR) dampers have shown their
capabilities in reducing vibration of structures when subjected to impact loadings. In order to achieve the best
performance of MR dampers for vibration control, a suitable semi-active control method is desired. Understanding and
modeling of the dynamic behavior of MR dampers is crucial in development of control strategies. This paper presents
both theoretical and experimental studies on modeling MR dampers under impact loadings. An improved polynomial
model with simple form, which is easy to be solved inversely and suitable for implement in real time control, is
proposed. A group of experimental tests are performed to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed model. The results
show that the proposed model can well describe the relationship of damper velocity and its output force during buffering
motion.
Keywords: Magnetorheological Fluid Damper, Dynamic Model, Impact Loading, Shock Isolation

1. INTRODUCTION
Magnetorheological (MR) fluids belong to a class of fluids that have the ability to change themselves from a liquid to
semi-solid state in milliseconds by exposing on a magnetic field1,2. This unique property makes MR fluids very attractive
in many engineering applications. Among them, MR fluid dampers are the most popular devices with the properties of
mechanical simplicity, low power consumption, high dynamic force range, and rapid response time that have been used
for vibration control in many industry areas2,3. The great success of MR fluid technology continues to develop into new
and emerging areas. In recent years, MR fluid dampers have been considered to use under shock and impact loadings4,5.
The dynamics of MR fluid damper perform a strong nonlinearity due to the external magnetic field, suffered load etc. So
far, there is no agreed dynamical model of the MR damper. Most researches mainly focus on Bingham model, Herschel-
Bulkey model, Bouc-Wen model, phenomenon model, modified Dahl model and sigmoid model6,7 etc. However, these
models are mostly used in the situation of low speed and random loads, primarily considering issues of hysteresis
characteristics and shear thinning phenomenon. As for the impact buffer process, its dynamical model becomes more
complicated because of the enormous difference circumstance compared with low-speed. In order to realize the impact
buffer process real-time control, there is a necessity to establish a dynamical model of MR fluid damper which suits
impact buffer circumstance completely.1
Based on the experimental analysis, this paper proposes an improved polynomial model of MR fluid damper under
impact loadings. A correction term is introduced to improve the precision of the model and better to describe the
complex characteristics of the dynamics of the MR fluid damper. Both for the high acceleration area and for the low
acceleration area, the results of experimental data and the proposed polynomial model are compared.

*wjiongz@njust.edu.cn

Active and Passive Smart Structures and Integrated Systems 2013, edited by Henry Sodano,
Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8688, 86881C · © 2013 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/13/$18
doi: 10.1117/12.2009653

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 2. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS
2.1 Experimental setup
A full scale gun recoil system was established to produce impact loadings and test the dynamic behaviors of the MR
damper8. The test rig is shown in figure 1. A small multi-action automatic gun with minor modification is mounted to a
fixed base through the sliding guide. A MR damper with mono-tube and a single-ended piston was designed and
manufactured. The piston rod of the MR damper is mounted to the fixed base and the outer cylinder is fixed to the gun
barrel so that the damper is used to damp out the dynamic behaviors under impact loadings. A force transducer is
installed between the piston rod and one end of the fixed base to measure the damping force. A velocity transducer is
mounted at the bottom of the fixed base to sense the velocity plot of the MR damper subjected to impact loadings.

enu pm Erxsq ps
Zbxiu&-

Figure 1. Photograph of the test rig for MR damper based gun recoil system.
The scheme of the measurement system is shown in Figure 2. The accelerometer is used to as a trigger signal to trigger
the DAQ card. Both accelerometer (B&K 4371V11568) and force transducer (Kistler 9351B) need a charge amplifier
(Kistler 5011B, Swiss) to convert charge signal to voltage signal. The velocity of the MR damper is measured by a
magnetostrictive sensor (model: RP Profile-style position sensor manufactured by MTS, USA). The output of this
transducer is electric current at the range between 4 to 20 mA. Then a 100 ohm resistor is used as conditioning circuit to
convert current to voltage. A software interface is performed by LabVIEW to display and save the experimental data.

Dí16 ca
iuTsL0i

Figure 2. Scheme of the measurement system.

2.2 Experimental results and discussion
The velocity and damping force of the MR damper for different applied currents under the impact force are shown in
figure 3. As it can be seen from figure 3 (a), the absolute value of acceleration in the period of 0 ~ ts is much larger than
that in the period of ts ~ 0.08s . Hence, the period of 0 ~ ts can be called as high acceleration period and the period of
ts ~ 0.08s can be called as low acceleration period. Obviously, the velocities are nearly same for different applied
current in the high acceleration period. That means the applied current does not work for velocity when the acceleration
is very high. Whereas, the velocity decreases when the applied current increases in after ts . The damping force
increases when the applied current increases in the both periods.

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 5
0.0A
4
0.5A
1.0A
3 1.5A
2.0A

Velocity (m/s)
2
High acceleration
1 area

-1 Low acceleration
area
-2

0.00 ts 0.04 0.08

Time (s)

(a) Velocity vs. Time

12
0.0A
10 0.5A
1.0A
1.5A
8 2.0A
Force (kN)

0.00 ts 0.04 0.08

Time (s)

(b) Damping force vs. Time.

Figure 3. Dynamic behaviors of the MR damper under impact loading.
The peak damping forces and the maximum velocities for different applied current are plotted in figure 4 and figure 5,
separately. As we can see, the peak damping force accelerated increases and the maximum velocity remains when the
applied current increases. Therefore, the velocity-dependent damping force is same for different currents. That means
the field-dependent damping force is accelerated increases when the applied current increases. The experimental results
don’t accord with the property of magnetic saturation of the MR fluid. It shows that an additional field-dependent force
is not included in the dynamic model of the MR fluid damper. Because the mechanism of the MR fluid damper under
impact force is not completely clear, the uncertain and nonlinear damped force make it hard to present a precise
parameterized model. In this paper, a non- parameterized model is adopted and modified for MR fluid damper under
impact loadings.

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 11

10

Force (kN)
7

3
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Current (A)

Figure 4. Peak damping forces for different applied currents.

6

4
Velocity (m/s)

0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Current (A)

Figure 5. Maximum velocities for different applied currents.

3. IMPROVED POLYNOMIAL MODEL

A polynomial model was proposed to predict the hysteresis characteristics for the field-dependent damping force9. In
this damper model, the coefficients are independent with the controlled current so that the applied current is easy to be
derived from the model equation for control. The field-dependent damping force can be given by:
n
Fd = ∑ (bi + ci I )vi (1)
i =0

Where bi and ci are experimental coefficients to be determined from the curve fitting, I is the applied current, n is the
order of the polynomial. Therefore, the control input is determined from equation (1) and it is given by:

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 n
Fd − ∑b v
i =0
i
i

I= n
(2)
∑c v
i =0
i
i

It is observed from equation (2) that the proposed model can be easily integrated with a control system. In this paper,
the polynomial model is improved to predict the damping force for the MR fluid damper under impact loadings. An
additional polynomial α (I ) is added to equation (1) as a correction term for obtaining higher accuracy. α (I ) is a
polynomial with respect to applied current with the purpose to adjust the position of the curves in vertical direction. The
improved model is expressed as follows:
n
Fd = ∑ (b + c I )v
i =1
i i
i
+ α (I ) (3)

α (I ) is expressed as follows:
m
α (I ) = ∑ a j I j (4)
j =0

where a j is coefficient of the correction term. The orders of the polynomial n and m are determined by trial and error.
Generally, n and m should not be larger than 6 so that the model is not complicated to solve the controlled current.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The measured damping forces are compared with the predicted damping forces for different controlled currents obtained
from the proposed improved polynomial model as shown in figure 6. Figure 6(a) and (b) show the compared results in
high acceleration area without and with correction term respectively and figure 6(c) shows those in low acceleration
area. The experimental results are obtained under impact loadings produced by the gun recoil system. Five group tests
are performed by applying five different currents of 0A, 0.5A, 1.0A, 1.5A and 2A.
12

Experimental data (0A)

10 Experimental data (0.5A)
Experimental data (1.0A)
Experimental data (1.5A)
8
Experimental data (2.0A)
Force Fd /(kN)

Polynomial model
6

0
0 1 2 3 4
-1
Velocity v/(m⋅s )
(a) High acceleration area without correction term
More specifically, the polynomial model without correction term fits well with experimental data in the low-speed
section and the inaccuracy enlarges in the high-speed section, while the proposed model with correction term agrees well
in the whole range. With the increase of loading velocity (less than 0.75m/s), the curve slope lessens which indicates that
MR fluid has the performance of shear shinning. However, the total damping force is greatly influenced by the

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 additional force, air pressure and inertia force as the velocity increases (more than 1.75m/s). In Figure (c), the small
fluctuation mainly caused by measurement error does not affect the whole fitting accuracy.

12

Experimental data (0A)

10
Experimental data (0.5A)
Experimental data (1A)
8 Experimental data (1.5A)
Experimental data (2A)
Force (kN)
Proposed polynomial model
6

0
0 1 2 3 4
Velocity (m/s)

(b) High acceleration area with correction term.

8
Experimental data (0A)
7 Experimental data (0.5A)
Experimental data (1A)
6 Experimental data (1.5A)
Experimental data (2A)
5 Proposed polynomial model
Force (kN)

0
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Velocity (m/s)
(c) Low acceleration area with correction term.
Figure 6. Comparison between predicted damping forces and actual ones for different currents.
It is clearly shown that the predicted damping force curve is similar to the actual one under any current controlled. That
means that the nonlinear behavior of the MR fluid damper under impact loadings is well predicted by the proposed
improved polynomial model. As we can see, the slopes of the two group curves in figure 6(b) and figure (c) are very
different. That indicates the hysteresis behavior of the MR fluid damper. It is concluded that the proposed model in this
paper can also predict the nonlinear and hysteresis behavior well in the whole range.
The specific value of a j , bi and ci used in high acceleration area and low acceleration area are listed in Table 1 and
Table 2 separately. It can be seen that the coefficients are not sensitive to the magnitude of the input current. Therefore,
it’s not necessary to feedback the actual applied current and it becomes easy to achieve a desirable damping force.

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 Table 1. Coefficients a j , bi and ci of the improved polynomial model.

High acceleration area Low acceleration area

Parameter Value Parameter Value Parameter Value Parameter Value Parameter Value Parameter Value

b1 -1873 c1 3613 a0 162 b1 170 c1 500 a0 162

b2 3850 c2 -4826 a1 1684 b2 1000 c2 1431 a1 1684

b3 -2671 c3 2783 a2 -5108 b3 -2968 c3 480 a2 -5108

b4 779 c4 -668 a3 3560 b4 3900 c4 -1900 a3 3560

b5 -77 c5 58 a4 -704 b5 2000 c5 1260 a4 -704

b6 360 c6 -251

5. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the experimental analysis, a novel dynamic model for the MR fluid damper under impact loadings is presented.
The proposed improved polynomial model is characterized by a correction term which is useful to describe the complex
dynamic behavior of the MR damper under impact loadings. The coefficients of the improved polynomial are
independent with each other that are helpful to realize the real-time control. The results show that the experimental data
have good agreement with the proposed improved polynomial model in both high acceleration area and low acceleration
area. Therefore, the improved polynomial model presented in this paper is suitable for the MR fluid damper subjected to
impact loadings.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by a National Natural Science Foundation (NSFC) of China grant funded by the Chinese
government (No. 51175265).

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