MR Fluid Damper and Its Application to Force Sensorless Damping Control System

Vibration suppression is considered as a key research field in civil engineering to ensure the safety and comfort of their occupants and users of mechanical structures. To reduce the system vibration, an effective vibration control with isolation is necessary. Vibration control techniques have classically been categorized into two areas, passive and active controls. For a long time, efforts were made to make the suspension system work optimally by optimizing its parameters, but due to the intrinsic limitations of a passive suspension system, improvements were effective only in a certain frequency range. Compared with passive suspensions, active suspensions can improve the performance of the suspension system over a wide range of frequencies. Semi-active suspensions were proposed in the early 1970s [1], and can be nearly as effective as active suspensions. When the control system fails, the semi-active suspension can still work under passive conditions. Compared with active and passive suspension systems, the semi-active suspension system combines the advantages of both active and passive suspensions because it provides better performance when compared with passive suspensions and is economical, safe and does not require either higher-power actuators or a large power supply as active suspensions do [2].