A novel magnetorheological elastomer-based adaptive tuned vibration absorber: design, analysis and experimental characterization

Abstract

The present study aims at the development of a novel semi-active adaptive tuned vibration absorber (SATVA) capable of tuning its natural frequency adaptively in low frequency range. The absorber consists of a multilayer sandwich beam featuring magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) and integrated U-shaped electromagnets which are attached at the top and bottom layers of the sandwich beam. Electromagnets are designed to provide the required magnetic field to alter the stiffness of the MRE layers while also acting as the active mass of the absorber. Based on the characterization of the shear and loss modulus of the fabricated MRE samples, the finite element (FE) model of the proposed SATVA has been developed to analyze the absorber to meet the design requirements and also to evaluate its dynamic performance. The proposed SATVA is then fabricated and experimental set-ups are designed to validate the electromagnet and FE models. The frequency response function of the proposed SATVA is then investigated under different levels of the applied current to the electromagnets. It has been shown that good agreement exists between simulation and FE results. A frequency-shift of approximately 9% was achieved while maintaining a reasonable factor of safety for material constraints. Finally, using the validated FE mode, a parametric study has been conducted to investigate the effect of different design parameters.

Magnetorheological Elastomer‐Based Materials and Devices: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

“…[ 107 ] In regard to their shape, typical shear testing of mechanical properties requires circular or cylindrical shape, and those are the most prevalent in the literature. [ 108–110 ] However, one of the most useful characteristics of MREs is that, since they are fabricated from a fluid elastomer that solidifies during the curing process, they can adopt other sizes and shapes. Thus, cubic, [ 111 ] rectangular, [ 93 ] or even coaxial micropumps have been developed.…”

“…Following this argument, a semiactive ATVA has been developed, consisting of a five‐layered sandwich beam treated with two layers of isotropic MREs with 25 vol% CI particle fractions. [ 109 ] The behavior of the MRE was modeled using finite elements. To verify the appropriate functioning of the system, the vibration absorber was excited with a sinusoidal harmonic vibration signal under a constant acceleration of 0.1 m s −2 in the range of 2 to 20 Hz and sandwiched between two electromagnets excited with different currents (0, 2, 4, and 6 A) to generate the magnetic field.…”

The Modeling of Magnetorheological Elastomers: A State‐of‐the‐Art Review

“…It has been unanimously reported that the shear moduli of MREs increase with increasing magnetic field strength. Owing to their field-dependent modulus, contactless control, and the shape-morphing features, MREs have attracted much attention over the past few years, making them an ideal smart material candidates to address stiffness or modulus tunability requirements in different engineering applications such as smart sensors and actuators, adaptive vibration isolators, [25][26][27][28] tunable vibration absorbers (TVAs), [29][30][31][32][33] adaptive dampers, [34][35][36] sandwich beams, [37][38][39][40] and biomedical engineering such as tissue engineering [41][42][43][44] and drug delivery. [45,46] There have also been several review papers in the literature that discuss the potential applications of such materials.…”

Characteristic analysis of a novel magnetorheological fabric composite cored flexible sandwich beam with tunable stiffness

“…In order to solve this problem, MR elastomer is utilized in the flexible beam. Particle chains are locked into the viscoelastic matrix with variable stiffness (Rasooli et al, 2020). The corresponding natural frequency of a developed vibration absorber with MR elastomer was tuned from 55 to 82 Hz with an increase of 47% (Deng et al, 2006).…”