Control and response characteristics of a magneto-rheological fluid damper for passenger vehicles

This paper presents control characteristics of a full-car suspension featuring a semi-active magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper. A cylindrical MR damper is devised and its field-dependent damping force is evaluated with respect to the piston velocity. After verifying that the damping force can be continuously controlled by the intensity of the magnetic field, the MR damper is applied to a full-car model. The governing equations of motions, which include vertical, pitch, and roll motions are derived and incorporated with the skyhook controller. Control characteristics of the full-car suspension installed with the proposed MR damper are evaluated through hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS), and presented in both time and frequency domains.