Optimal Design of MR Shock Absorber for Passenger Vehicle

Abstract

This paper presents optimal design of a controllable magnetorheological (MR) shock absorber for a passenger vehicle. In order to achieve this goal, a cylindrical MR shock absorber, which satisfies design specifications for a mid-sized commercial passenger vehicle, is designed using an optimization methodology. The optimization problem is to find optimal geometric dimensions of the magnetic circuit for the MR shock absorber in order to maximize damping force. The first order optimization method using commercial finite element method (FEM) software is adopted for the constrained optimization algorithm.