Optimal Hyperbolic Tangent Model for Outer Bypass MR Damper with Meandering Type Valve

This research discusses the application of the hyperbolic tangent model for an outer bypass MR damper with a meandering valve, which was developed by one of the authors. The hyperbolic tangent model consists of six parameters. In this study, parameter reduction was carried out using local and global sensitivity analysis, and a parameter identification strategy based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) was employed. The objective function is the relative error between the model's force and the force obtained from experiments with an outer bypass MR damper prototype featuring a meandering valve. The sensitivity analysis identifies an optimal hyperbolic tangent model with two sensitive parameters, while the remaining parameters are determined to be constant. The results show an improvement in accuracy, with the optimal hyperbolic tangent model reducing the error from 8.06 % to 7.1 %. This indicates that the optimal hyperbolic tangent model can be obtained by applying the sensitivity analysis method developed in this research.