State of the art of control schemes for smart systems featuring magneto-rheological materials

This review presents various control strategies for application systems utilizing smart magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) and magneto-rheological elastomers (MRE). It is well known that both MRF and MRE are actively studied and applied to many practical systems such as vehicle dampers. The mandatory requirements for successful applications of MRF and MRE include several factors: advanced material properties, optimal mechanisms, suitable modeling, and appropriate control schemes. Among these requirements, the use of an appropriate control scheme is a crucial factor since it is the final action stage of the application systems to achieve the desired output responses. There are numerous different control strategies which have been applied to many different application systems of MRF and MRE, summarized in this review. In the literature review, advantages and disadvantages of each control scheme are discussed so that potential researchers can develop more effective strategies to achieve higher control performance of many application systems utilizing magneto-rheological materials

Development of a semi-active car suspension control system using magneto-rheological damper model

In this paper, the development of a semi- active suspension control of quarter car model using fuzzy-based controller has been done. The quarter car model to be used here can be described as a nonlinear two degrees of freedom system which is subject to excitation from different road profile. The semi-active control is designed as the fuzzy control inferred by using two single input rule fuzzy modules, and the road model is used as the control force is released by actuating an electromagnetic shaker. To implement semi-active suspension system experimentally, the MR damper is used here as the adjustable damper. The MR damper is a control device that consists of a hydraulic cylinder filled with magnetically polarizable particles suspended in a liquid. MR dampers dissipate vibration by absorbing energy. Magnetorheological (MR) fluids dampers are very effective to control vibration, which use MR fluids to produce controllable damping force and provide both the reliability of passive systems and the facility of active control systems with small power supply. Due to their mechanical simplicity, high dynamic range, low power requirements, large force capacity, and robustness, offer an attractive means of vibration protection. The objectives of this are modeling of semi-active suspension system, developing controller and understanding the characteristics of the MR damper to provide effective damping for the purpose of suspension isolation or suppression car model. In this work pid, fuzzy logic and fuzzy-hybrid controller are used to control semi-active car suspension system

Innovative magnetorheological devices for shock and vibration mitigation

Vibration and impact protection have been a popular topic in research fields, which could directly affect the passengers’ and drivers’ comfort and safety, even cause spines fracture. Therefore, an increasing number of vehicle suspensions and aircraft landing gears are proposed and manufactured. Magnetorheological fluids (MRFs), as a smart material, are growly applied into the above device owing to its unique properties such as fast response, reversible properties, and broad controllable range, which could improve the vibration/impact mitigation performance. MRF was utilized to achieve adaptive parameters of the vehicle suspensions by controlling the magnetic field strength of the MRF working areas. Generally, the magnetic field is provided by a given current, subsequently, it would consume massive energy from a long-term perspective. Thus, a self-powered concept was applied as well. This thesis reports a compact stiffness controllable MR damper with a self-powered capacity. After the prototype of the MR damper, its property tests were conducted to verify the stiffness controllability and the energy generating ability using a hydraulic Instron test system. Then, a quarter-car test rig was built, and the semi-active MR suspension integrated with the self-powered MR damper was installed on a test rig. Two controllers, one based on short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and a classical skyhook controller was developed to control the stiffness. The evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed MR damper incorporated with STFT controller or skyhook controller could suppress the response displacements and accelerations obviously comparing with the conventional passive systems

Advanced suspension system using magnetorheological technology for vehicle vibration control

In the past forty years, the concept of controllable vehicle suspension has attracted extensive attention. Since high price of an active suspension system and deficiencies on a passive suspension, researchers pay a lot attention to semi-active suspension. Magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) is always an ideal material of semi-active structure. Thanks to its outstanding features like large yield stress, fast response time, low energy consumption and significant rheological effect. MR damper gradually becomes a preferred component of semi-active suspension for improving the riding performance of vehicle. However, because of the inherent nonlinear nature of MR damper, one of the challenging aspects of utilizing MR dampers to achieve high levels of performance is the development of an appropriate control strategy that can take advantage of the unique characteristics of MR dampers. This is why this project has studied semi-active MR control technology of vehicle suspensions to improve their performance. Focusing on MR semi-active suspension, the aim of this thesis sought to develop system structure and semi-active control strategy to give a vehicle opportunity to have a better performance on riding comfort. The issues of vibration control of the vehicle suspension were systematically analysed in this project. As a part of this research, a quarter-car test rig was built; the models of suspension and MR damper were established; the optimization work of mechanical structure and controller parameters was conducted to further improve the system performance; an optimized MR damper (OMRD) for a vehicle suspension was designed, fabricated, and tested. To utilize OMRD to achieve higher level of performance, an appropriate semi-active control algorithm, state observer-based Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy controller (SOTSFC), was designed for the semi-active suspension system, and its feasibility was verified through an experiment. Several tests were conducted on the quarter-car suspension to investigate the real effect of this semiactive control by changing suspension damping. In order to further enhance the vibration reduction performance of the vehicle, a fullsize variable stiffness and variable damping (VSVD) suspension was further designed, fabricated, and tested in this project. The suspension can be easily installed into a vehicle suspension system without any change to the original configuration. A new 3- degree of freedom (DOF) phenomenological model to further accurately describe the dynamic characteristic of the VSVD suspension was also presented. Based on a simple on-off controller, the performance of the variable stiffness and damping suspension was verified numerically. In addition, an innovative TS fuzzy modelling based VSVD controller was designed. The TS fuzzy modelling controller includes a skyhook damping control module and a state observer based stiffness control module which considering road dominant frequency in real-time. The performance evaluation of the VSVD control algorithm was based on the quarter-car test rig which equipping the VSVD suspension. The experiment results showed that this strategy increases riding comfort effectively, especially under off-road working condition. The semi-active control system developed in this thesis can be adapted and used on a vehicle suspension in order to better control vibration

Development of a semi-active car suspension control system using magneto-rheological damper model

In this paper, the development of a semi- active suspension control of quarter car model using fuzzy-based controller has been done. The quarter car model to be used here can be described as a nonlinear two degrees of freedom system which is subject to excitation from different road profile. The semi-active control is designed as the fuzzy control inferred by using two single input rule fuzzy modules, and the road model is used as the control force is released by actuating an electromagnetic shaker. To implement semi-active suspension system experimentally, the MR damper is used here as the adjustable damper. The MR damper is a control device that consists of a hydraulic cylinder filled with magnetically polarizable particles suspended in a liquid. MR dampers dissipate vibration by absorbing energy. Magnetorheological (MR) fluids dampers are very effective to control vibration, which use MR fluids to produce controllable damping force and provide both the reliability of passive systems and the facility of active control systems with small power supply. Due to their mechanical simplicity, high dynamic range, low power requirements, large force capacity, and robustness, offer an attractive means of vibration protection. The objectives of this are modeling of semi-active suspension system, developing controller and understanding the characteristics of the MR damper to provide effective damping for the purpose of suspension isolation or suppression car model. In this work pid, fuzzy logic and fuzzy-hybrid controller are used to control semi-active car suspension system

Design and Investigation of a Semi-Active Suspension System in Automotive Applications

Modern vehicles are equipped with numerous sensors and systems intended to improve performance and ride quality. Suspension systems in vehicles are essential links between the vehicle body and the pavement, and they play a large role in determining ride comfort and handling stability. this is in fact no easy task since these two goals are in conflict.While active suspension systems could help to solve this trade-off, disadvantages such as high costs and high power consumption prevent their widespread adoption in the automotive industry.On the other hand, a semi-active suspension system can provide desirable performance while providing a more cost-effective solution than a fully active suspension system. Research in this thesis will be conducted on semi-active systems using the MR damper. MR dampers aremodelled in MATLAB/Simulink and then their viscoelasticity characteristics are investigated. A quarter-car model is designed in state-space and modelled in MATLAB/Simulink. Two control systems are proposed for a semi-active suspension system using Linear Quadratic Regulator and Fuzzy Logic Controller. Modelled systems are analyzed for four road profiles, including road type C according to international standards ISO/TC108/SC2N67 and the control system\u27s effectiveness will be evaluated by analyzing the RMS values of vertical body acceleration and tire deflection.Results of simulation show that the designed semi-active suspension system can improve vehicle performance regarding both ride comfort and handling stability.For the following, an additional suspension mechanism has been considered for the seats of vehicles. This suspension system is modelled, which is three degrees of freedom with six state variables in state-space form, and its behaviour is analyzed by using MATLAB/Simulink. It isshown that an additional suspension system can improve the ride quality significantly

Adaptive neural network control for semi-active vehicle suspensions

An adaptive neural network (ANN) control method for a continuous damping control (CDC) damper is used in vehicle suspension systems. The control objective is to suppress positional oscillation of the sprung mass in the presence of road irregularities. To achieve this, a boundary model is first applied to depict dynamic characteristics of the CDC damper based on experimental data. To overcome nonlinearity issues of the model system and uncertainties in the suspension parameters, an adaptive radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) with online learning capability is utilized to approximate unknown dynamics, without the need for prior information related to the suspension system. In addition, particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique is adopted to determine and optimize the parameters of the controller. Closed loop stability and asymptotic convergence performance are guaranteed based on Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed controller can effectively regulate the chassis vertical position under different road excitations. Furthermore, the control performance is determined to be better than that of the typical Skyhook controller

Fuzzy sliding mode controller design for semi-active seat suspension with neuro-inverse dynamics approximation for MR damper

To improve the ride comfort of car, this paper proposed a semi-active seat suspension with magneto-rheological (MR) damper and designed a new fuzzy sliding mode controller with expansion factor (FSMCEF) based on the neuro-inverse dynamics approximation of the MR damper. This FSMCEF combines the advantages of both sliding mode controller (SMC) and fuzzy controller (FC) with expansion factor (EF), and it takes an ideal skyhook model as the reference, and creates a sliding mode control law based on the errors dynamics between the seat suspension and its reference model. Further fuzzy rules are used to suppress the chattering occurred in the above sliding mode control by fuzzifying the sliding mode surface and its derivative. Moreover, in order to compute the required control current for MR damper after solving the desired control force using FSMCEF, this paper presented a BP algorithm based neural network inverse model, located between the FSMCEF and the MR damper, taking the displacement, velocity of the MR damper and the desired control force output by FSMCEF as its input, and predicting the control current required to input MR damper. The predicting error and stability of the neural network inverse model for MR is investigated by sample testing. In addition, the stability analysis of FSMCEF is also completed by under nominal system and non-nominal system with parameter uncertainty and external disturbance. The results of numerical simulations show that the vibration reduction effect of the semi-active seat is obviously improved using FSMCEF compared with using PID controller and SMC

System Approach to Vehicle Suspension System Control in CAE Environment

In recent years, motor vehicles industry has shown a tendency of replacing electromechanical components by mechatronic systems with intelligent and autonomous properties. The integration of hardware components and implementation of advance control function characterize this replacement. In this paper we have applied the system approach and system engineering methods in the initial phase of vehicle active suspension development. An emphasis has been placed upon the interrelations between computer-aided simulation and other elements of the development process. The benefits of application of active suspension simulation are numerous: reduction of time to market, the new and improved functions of mechatronic components/devices, as well as the increased system reliability. In suspension model development, we used CAD/CAE tools, as well as the multipurpose simulation programs. For simulation, we used the one-quarter vehicle model. The modelling was carried out through the state-space equation, after which we designed the controller for our system. During this, we considered only the digital systems of automatic regulation