Lots of semiactive control devices have been developed in recent years because they have the best features of passive and active system. Especially, controllable magneto-rheological(MR) fluid devices have received significant attention in these area of research. The MR fluid is the material that reversibly change from a free-flowing, linear viscous fluid to a semisolid with a controllable yield strength in milliseconds when exposed to a magnetic field. If the magnetic field is induced by moving a permanent magnet instead of applying current to a solenoid, it is possible to design a MR damper consuming low power because the power consumption is reduced at steady state. This paper proposes valve mode MR damper using permanent magnetic circuit that has wide range of operation with low power consumption and small size.
To design a MR damper that has a large maximum dissipating torque and a low damping coefficient, a design parameter is adopted. The magnetic circuit, material of choke and choke type are selected experimentally with the design parameter. The behaviors of the damper are examined and torque tracking control using PID feedback controller is performed for step, ramp and sinusoidal trajectories. The experimental results show that PID feedback controller mitigates the performance reduction resulting from hysteresis and time delay.
