Simulation study of electromagnetic circuit design in laminated magnetorheological elastomer isolator

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents a simulation study of magnetic flux density distribution in a laminated magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) isolator. The performance of laminated MRE isolator depends on the particular magnetic properties of materials. Therefore, the electromagnetic simulation using Finite Element Method Magnetic (FEMM) had been carried out in designing and optimizing the MRE isolator. It is apparent that the capability of magnetic flux penetrated through the MRE depends on the design parameters approach including the selection of the materials, shape of MRE, thickness of MRE and steel sheet. IntroductionMagnetorheological elastomer (MRE) is a smart composite material and considered as a new generation of magnetorheological (MR) materials which composed of rubber and magnetic particles with property in such a way that the stiffness and damping are controllable with the application of magnetic field [1][2][3][4]. The innovative designs of devices that incorporate MRE for various applications such as vehicle seat vibration suspension [5,6], and base isolation have been studied by many researchers [7][8][9]. Recently, the study about MRE isolator in seismic isolation system which categorized as a semi active isolation devices have been explored to reduce an earthquake vibration of civil structures [1]. Therefore, the isolation system using MRE could be considered as a potential isolator for improving seismic protection capability of structure [9,10]. Conventionally, rubber matrix has a constant stiffness characteristic, once designed and installed to the structures, behaves as a passive type of isolation system. The development and characteristic of MRE were investigated to increase the adaptability of such passive base isolation system [8,11,12]. For example, Zhou et al. [8] investigated the performance comparison between an MR fluid damper and an MRE isolator in building structure. Behrooz et al. [13,14] proposed a variable stiffness and damping isolator (VSDI) to be used in vibration mitigation of scaled building structure and the study started from the development of the MRE until the characterization of the VSDI as an isolator. Li et al. [15][16][17] proposed adaptive seismic isolator and tested to evaluate and characterize the behaviour of the MRE seismic isolator. However, most of the researchers focused on the development of material properties for specific applications and mechanical design of MRE isolator.Other factors such as a design concept and an advancement of electromagnetic properties are not properly studied. Therefore, in order to predict the magnetic field strength across the MRE, an axialsymmetrical model of laminated MRE isolator was simulated using finite element method magnetics (FEMM). Furthermore, the geometrical parameters in designing the laminated MRE isolator was determined and considered to optimize the performance of the isolator.

Design and Dynamic Stiffness Evaluation of Magnetorheological Elastomer Bushing using FEMM and Dynamic Testing Machine

“…The effective area is referring to the MRE compound as it produces the stiffness of the device since it has the viscoelastic behaviour. The investigation on the effective area can be seen in other prior works of MRE devices as well [13], [16], [27]- [28].…”