The magnetorheological (MR) damper is one of the most promising new devices for vehicle vibration suppression because it has many advantages such as mechanical simplicity, high dynamic range, low power requirements, large force capacity and robustness. The damper offers a compromise solution for the two conflicting requirements of ride comfort and vehicle handling.
In this paper, a new approach for studying the dynamical behavior of an MR damper is presented. It consists of a three dimensional interpolation using Chebyshev orthogonal polynomial functions to identify the damping force as a function of the displacement, velocity and input voltage. The identification and its validation are done in both simulation and experimentation. In the former case the data are generated by solving the modified Bouc-Wen model. In the experimental approach, the data are generated through dynamic tests with the damper mounted on a tensile testing machine. In either case, validation data sets representing a wide range of working conditions of the damper show that the use of Chebyshev interpolation to predict the damping force for known displacement, velocity and voltage is reasonably accurate.
