Advances in the Control Schemes for MR Actuators

Magnetorheological (MR) actuators are known semi-active devices. In the essence, the hardware incorporates a valve being a solenoid with a flow channel. Supplying the current to the solenoid’s coil induces the magnetic field in the channel. As a results, the fluid transitions from a near-Newtonian one to a pseudo-solid. In the paper we show that significant improvements in the MR actuator dynamics can be achieved by exploring flux feedback control systems rather than current feedback ones. The flux-based approach would improve the system’s response time and its bandwidth as well as minimize the contribution of the eddy currents. Thus, numerical simulations have been carried out to test the original hypothesis. The obtained data (from co-simulations) prove that the proposed approach delivers good results although further research is required on further optimizing the controller’s gains and prior to building a real prototype.