This paper presents a simulation study of electromagnetic circuit design for a mixed mode Magnetorheological (MR) damper. The magnetic field generated by electromagnetic circuit of the MR damper was simulated using Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM) software package. All aspects of geometry parameters were considered and adjusted efficiently in order to obtain the best MR damper performance. Eventually, six different parameters approach were proposed; the selection of materials, the polarity of coils, the diameter of piston, piston rod and core, the shear and squeeze gaps clearance, the piston pole length and the thickness of housing.

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Magnetorheological (MR) fluid is one of the field-responsive fluids that is of interest to many researchers due to its high yield stress value, which depends on the magnetic field strength. Similar to electrorheological (ER) fluid, the combination of working modes is one of the techniques to increase the performance of the fluids with limited focus on MR fluids. In this paper, a novel MR testing cell incorporated with valve, shear and squeeze operational modes is designed and constructed in order to investigate the behaviour of MR fluid in combined mode. The magnetic field distribution in the design concept was analyzed using finite element method in order to verify the effective areas of each mode have the acceptable range of flux density. The annular gap of valve and shear were fixed at 1 mm, while the squeeze gap between the parallel circular surfaces was varied up to 20 mm. Three different coil configurations, which were made up from 23 SWG copper wires were set up in the MR cell. The simulation results indicated that the magnetic field distributed in the squeeze gap was the highest among the other gaps with all coils were subjected to a constant applied current of 1 A. Moreover, the magnetic flux densities in all gaps were in a good range of magnitude based on the simulations that validated the proposed design concept. Hence, the 3D model of the MR testing cell was designed using Solidworks for manufacturing processes.