Statistical modeling of a magneto-rheological fluid damper using the design of experiments approach

In this work, a through-rod-type magneto-rheological (MR) test damper has been designed and fabricated for experimental study. Various factors, such as the magnetic field strength, volume fraction of particles in the MR fluid, shearing gap between piston and cylinder, vibration frequency and amplitude, have been considered as input factors, and the root-mean-square (RMS) damping force as the output factor (response variable). These input factors are varied in two levels (low and high) during the initial phase of experimentation using 25 factorial design; the motivation is to identify the most influential factors. In the second phase of experimentation, the response surface method has been used to identify the modeling equation and to plot the response surfaces. Further, force versus displacement diagrams have been plotted at these factor levels; these give an insight into the damping behaviour of the MR damper.