The thermodynamic study of the valve-controlled adjustable damping shock absorber is conducted in order to solve the problem of oil leakage caused by excessive temperature rise of shock absorber. In this paper, the temperature rise of the valve-controlled adjustable damping shock absorber is analyzed from the perspective of energy conservation. Combined with the theory of fluid mechanics, the damping heat model is established, and the heat dissipation model of the shock absorber is established based on heat convection, heat conduction and heat radiation. The corresponding thermal equilibrium equation is established on the basis of damping heat and heat dissipation. The effects of vibration velocity, outer diameter, thickness and length of reservoir cylinder, and wind velocity on its thermal performance have been investigated. Specifically, temperature after thermal equilibrium will grow with the increase of vibration velocity and thickness of reservoir cylinder and degrade with the increase of outer diameter, length of reservoir cylinder and wind velocity. The higher the balance temperature, the shorter time is required to arrive thermal equilibrium. The difference between the experimental and simulation values of oil temperature after thermal equilibrium was not more than 2 °C, which verified the correctness of the theoretical model, while the experimental value in the process of temperature rise lagged behind the simulation value, which was mainly caused by the cumulative error of step-by-step iteration and the mechanical hysteresis in the experiment. The conclusions obtained can provide some references for the design of shock absorbers.

A compound-driven magnetorheological (MR) valve is designed to cope with the low reliability and high energy consumption of traditional MR valves. The operating magnetic field of the valve is applied by both the excitation coil and ring magnet, maintaining excellent pressure drop performance even at zero current. To analyze the performance and obtain the variation law of the magnetic flux density and pressure drop, a pressure drop mathematical model and a magnetic field simulation model are established. The key parameters of the MR valve are also optimized using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithms-II (NSGA-II). A dynamic performance test system is built, and the influence of the load on the pressure drop and hysteresis characteristics of the MR valve is studied. The results show that the optimized pressure drop and adjustable coefficient are improved by 4.7 % and 8.6 % respectively. The pressure drop grows nonlinearly with the electric current and reaches saturation at a current of 1.5 A, and a pressure drop of 1485 kPa is still generated at zero current. The output damping force of the compound-driven MR valve-controlled damper can be continuously adjustable, indicating that the dynamic performance of the damper can be controlled by adjusting the input current.