Design, control and test of a magnetorheological fluid fan clutch

The research is developed and aims at a new clutch using MRF as the transmission medium. Based on the theory of hydrodynamics and the rheology govern equations of magnetorheological fluids, torque transfer model of magnetorheological clutch is derived. The relationships between some designed parameters and outputted torque are analyzed. According to the magnetic circuit design theory, two designed methods of magnetic circuit for magnetorheological clutch are provided. Using ANSYS software, its correctness of the theoretical calculation result is verified. Different spec magnetorheological clutches are designed and processed as test specimens. Besides, three control strategies, including double-control, PD control, fuzzy control, are respectively simulated in Matlab environment in order to analyze and evaluate their effect of temperature control. In order to improve the real-time, reliability and stability, an embedded system based on 89S51 microcontroller is designed and developed. A test and performance analysis platform for magnetorheological clutch is developed. And a series of experiments for magnetorheological clutch have been done, including its static characteristics, output characteristics and speed regulation characteristics. The experimental results proved its controllability of output speed for the designed magnetorheological clutch.