Study of Control System of Magnetorheological Dampers under Impact Load

In recoil mechanisms applications, the adjustability of magnetorheological (MR) damper is desired to be used in closed loop control system to provide the optimal damping force and the recoil dynamics can be controlled. In this paper, the damping control system of MR dampers subject to impact load is studied. Since the recoil cycle is very fast, about only several hundreds milliseconds, the response time of MR damping force is an important characteristic for MR dampers´ recoil applications. First, the special designed MR damping force response time was tested and a simplified nonlinear model of MR damping force control system was established. Second, since the response time tested above can not mesh with the application demands, PI control and adaptive algorithms were used to improve the response time and the tracking ability of the MR damping force by numerical simulation analysis. Finally, impact experiment validation was done. The conclusion is achieved that, it´s indeed possible that with good control method the adjustability of MR dampers is able to be used in a closed-loop system to avoid the large peak of the MR damping force, and the optimal recoil dynamics is able to be achieved.