Antagonized Bellows Damper filled with Electrorheological Suspension and Its Application to Vibration Isolation Control As An Active Damper.

Abstract

Antagonized bellows damper filled with an electrorheological (ER) suspension containing sulfonated polymer particles in silicone oil, has been developed, which consists of two metal bellows and an ER valve with several cylindrical electrodes. The damping characteristics and the vibration isolation control have been investigated experimentally and numerically. It was confirmed by experiments that the ER damper under constant applied voltage behaved like a coulomb friction damper, and the active damper could be constructed, by electrically varying the friction like forces proportional to the damper speed, to be a viscous damper with electrically controlable damping proportinal to the feedback gain. Two control strategies were applied to a single-degree-of-freedom vibration isolation system consisting of a mass, a spring, and the ER damper. A proposed new conceptual nonlinear feedback control strategy using the ER active damper was found to be most effective to reduce the vibration transmissibility of the system, and to lead the vibration isolation results almost similar to that of a full active vibration control case using an actuator. These experimental results of vibration isolation performances have been simulated very well by a numerical analysis based on a proposed analytical model of the ER damper.