Prosthetic knee using of hybrid concept of magnetorheological brake with a T-shaped drum

This paper focuses on developing a new configuration on magnetorheological (MR) brake damper as prosthetic knee. Knee uses magnetic fields to vary the viscosity of the MR fluid, and thereby its flexion resistance. Exerted transmissibility torque of the knee greatly depends on the magnetic field intensity in the MR fluid. In this study a rotary damper using MR fluid is addressed in which a single rotary disc will act as a brake while MR fluid is activated by magnetic field in different walking gait. The main objective of this study is to investigate a prosthetic knee with one activating rotary disc to accomplish necessary braking torque in walking gait via implementing of Newton´s equation of motion to derive generated torque at the inner and outer surfaces of the rotary drum. For this purpose a novel configuration of a T-shaped drum is proposed. In this new design, T-shaped disc will increase the effective areas of influences in between drum and MR fluid together and increasing of the braking torque will be accomplished as a consequent.