Control of a Dynamic Vibration Absorber Using a Magneto-Rheological Damper

Abstract

This paper investigates the control of a dynamic vibration absorber with a magneto-rheological fluid damper. The approaches include Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) and adaptive Feed Forward Control with Linear Quadratic Regulator as a feedback controller (LQR+FF). The responses of the controlled semi-active dynamic absorber system are evaluated with external sinusoidal inputs and compared to the optimally-tuned passive vibration absorber system using viscous dampers. The simulation results show that integrating controlled MR dampers in vibration absorber system is feasible and effective. The linear quadratic control is shown to improve the dynamic absorber performance over a substantial range of excitation frequencies and force levels. The LQR control method with the feed forward control is more effective than the LQR control alone and even more effective than the passive control in suppressing the vibration of the main mass and reducing the transmitted forces at resonant machine frequency and at higher external frequencies.