Characterization and Modeling of Symmetric and Asymmetric Damping Properties of a Magnetorheological Damper

For realizing the intelligent vehicle suspension design with magneto-rheological (MR) fluids dampers, extensive laboratory measurements are performed to characterize the symmetric and asymmetric hysteresis force properties of a MR-damper, under a wide range of drive current and harmonic excitation conditions (frequency and stroke). The proposed asymmetric damping force generation (ADFG) algorithm is employed to generate the asymmetric damping force in compression and extension for the symmetry MR-damper, and a generalized model is proposed to characterize the symmetric and asymmetric hysteretic force-velocity (f-v) characteristics of the controllable MR-damper. The measured data are used to identify the symmetric and asymmetric hysteretic f-v model parameters, and simulations are performed to assess the effectiveness of the proposed model synthesis by comparing the results with those obtained from the measured data under wide range of operating conditions. The results show reasonably good agreements between the simulation results and the measured data, irrespective of the excitation conditions and control current, and verify that the proposed ADFG algorithm is essential to yield the asymmetric damping property from the symmetry MR-damper. Key-Words: Magneto-rheological fluids damper Characteristics Hardware-in–the-loop test Characterization Modeling