In this paper a semi-active fluid-mechanism is presented, which offers a variable stiffness and damping by utilizing two magnetorheological fluid valves and two springs. The study incorporates the attributes of variable damping and stiffness into one compact device. A model for the magnetical, rheological, fluidical and mechanical behaviour of the whole system is derived. An experimental setup of the proposed system and an appropriate test bench are built in order to study the variable mechanical impedance behaviour with the corresponding simulations. The results proof that the stiffness of the system can be varied among three different values, while its damping is continuously variable.

It is traditionally considered that, due to the Hertzian contact force-deformation relationship, the stiffness of rolling bearings has stiffening characteristics, and gradually researchers find that the supporting characteristics of the system may stiffen, soften, and even coexist from them. The resonant hysteresis affects the stability and safety of the system, and its jumping effect can make an impact on the system. However, the ball bearing contains many nonlinearities such as the Hertzian contact between the rolling elements and raceways, bearing clearance, and time-varying compliances (VC), leading great difficulties to clarify the dynamical mechanism of resonant hysteresis of the system. With the aid of the harmonic balance and alternating frequency/time domain (HB-AFT) method and Floquet theory, this paper will investigate the hysteretic characteristics of the Hertzian contact resonances of a ball bearing system under VC excitations. Moreover, the linearized dynamic bearing stiffness of the system will be presented for assessing the locations of VC resonances, and the nonlinear characteristics of bearing stiffness will also be discussed in depth. Our analysis indicates that the system possesses many types of VC resonances such as the primary, internal, superharmonic, and even combination resonances, and the evolutions of these resonances are presented. Finally, the suppression of resonances and hysteresis of the system will be proposed by adjusting the bearing clearance.

In this study, a new class of magnetorheological (MR) damper, which can realize desired damping force at both low and high speeds of vehicle suspension systems, is proposed and its salient characteristics are shown through computer simulations. Unlike conventional MR dampers, the proposed MR damper has a specific pole shape function and therefore the damping coefficient is changed by varying the effective area of the main orifice. In addition, by controlling the opening or closing the bypass orifice, the drastic change of the damping coefficient is realizable. After briefly describing the operating principle, a mathematical modeling is performed considering the pole shape function which is a key feature of the proposed MR damper. Then, the field-dependent damping force and piston velocity-dependent characteristics are presented followed by an example on how to achieve desired damping force characteristics by changing the damping coefficient and slope breaking point which represents the bilinear damping property.

A digital ER-valve with a segmentation of its electrode in the parallel direction to the flow leads to a change in the gradient of the volume flow rate-pressure difference characteristic in both valve's ends. When such a valve is used in a damper, it presents an opportunity to have a damper with an adjustable damping constant. Despite its promising features, there is no experimental investigation yet found for this kind of digital ER-valve. In this work, a new model to describe the valve behavior is proposed and a comparison with the experimental results is presented. The experimental results show that the damping constant is able to be varied by changing the excitation pattern of the valve. Additionally, the comparison with the model shows that the measurement results and the model are in agreement. It proves that the new model is able to describe the behavior of such digital valve better compared to the existing model.

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