Analysis and tests for a novel double-piston MR damper

Here, a novel double-piston magnetorheological (MR) damper was proposed, its lightweight and compact size features made it especially suit for lightweight space flexible truss structures' vibration semi-active control. The fluid dynamic analysis of the damper was conducted using Bingham plastic model and the fluid dynamics theory. Based on a proper hypothesis, a simplified damping force calculation method fit for preliminary design phase was proposed. Tests were designed and performed to obtain the damper's hysteretic behavior under different drive currents. Aiming at the damper tests' output force asymmetry problem at go stroke and return-one, an improved asymmetric hyperbolic tangent model was presented. Comparative study results showed that the improved model can describe precisely the dynamic hysteretic behavior of this double-piston MR damper under different drive currents; it has a higher modeling accuracy at go-stroke and return-one simultaneously.