Modeling hysteretic characteristics of MR-fluid damper and model validation

Extensive laboratory measurements were performed to characterize the hysteretic force properties of a magneto-rheological damper under a wide range of magnitudes of control current and excitation conditions (frequency and stroke). A generalized model synthesis is proposed to characterize the biviscous hysteretic force characteristics using symmetric and asymmetric sigmoid functions on the basis of fundamental force generation mechanism. The global model synthesis is realized upon formulation and integration of component functions describing saturated hysteresis loop, linear rise and current-induced rise. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated by comparing the simulation results with the measured data in terms of hysteretic force-velocity characteristics under a wide range of test conditions. The results revealed excellent correlation between the measured data and model results, irrespective of the test conditions considered. The results of the study suggest that the proposed model could be effectively applied for characterizing the damper hysteresis and for the development of optimal controller for implementation in varied applications.