Design and Development of a Variable Damping Device for Vibration Control with Electrorheological (ER) Fluid

In present scenario, online monitoring and control of dynamic mechanical systems drives an attention of many researchers. Present paper explores design, development and fabrication of an Electrorheological fluid damper done in laboratory, which can be used as a semi-active variable damping device for control of mechanical vibrations. Electrorheological fluid used in this work is nowadays much admired as a smart material and it can be used effectively in conventional viscous damper as a damping fluid of which, rheological properties like viscosity can be changed within milliseconds. When such a damping device is used with a system which can provide high electric voltage, works as a semi-active damper and in absence of high electric voltage it works as a normal passive type viscous damper. This paper also presents some of the findings obtained after the analysis of an Electrorheological fluid damper for which a totally new test rig was designed and fabricated in a laboratory.