Topology optimization of magnetorheological fluid layers in sandwich plates for semi-active vibration control

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This paper investigates topology optimization of the magnetorheological (MR) fluid layer in a sandwich plate for improving the semi-active vibration control performance. Therein, a uniform magnetic field is applied across the MR fluid layer to provide a semi-active damping control effect. In the optimization model, the pseudo-densities describing the MR fluid material distribution are taken as design variables, and an artificial magneto-rheological fluid model (AMRF) with penalization is proposed to suppress intermediate density values. For reducing the vibration level under harmonic excitations, the dynamic compliance under a specific excitation frequency, or the frequency-aggregated dynamic compliance in a given frequency band, is taken as the objective function to be minimized. In this context, the adjoint-variable sensitivity analysis scheme is derived. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method are demonstrated by numerical examples, in which the structural dynamic performance can be remarkably improved through optimization. The influences of several key factors on the optimal designs are also explored. It is shown that the AMRF model is effective in yielding clear boundaries in the final optimal solutions without use of additional regularization techniques.