<title>Pressurized magnetorheological dampers for train suspension</title>

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop a pressurized magnetorheological (MR) damper which is suitable for train suspension in order to improve the ride comfort of passengers. A double-ended MR damper is designed and fabricated. The custom-made MR damper is pressurized in order to eliminate the force-lag problem. Then the MR damper is mathematically modeled with experimental validation and then integrated with the railway vehicle model. An on-off semi-active control strategy based on the measurement of the absolute lateral velocity of the car body is adopted for the semi-active suspension system. The performances of the semi-active train suspension system using MR dampers are evaluated by comparing with the passive, passive-on-H and passive-on-L suspension systems. The results indicate that when the human sensation of ride comfort is considered, the semi-active suspension with the developed MR dampers can substantially improve the ride quality of the passengers.