Feasibility study of an adaptive mount system based on magnetorheological elastomer using real-time hybrid simulation

This article investigates an adaptive mount system based on magnetorheological elastomer in reducing the vibration of an equipment on the isolation table. Incorporating MR elastomers, whose elastic modulus or stiffness can be adjusted depending on the applied magnetic field, the proposed mount system strives to alleviate the limitations of existing passive-type mount systems. The primary goal of this study is to evaluate the vibration reduction performance of the proposed MR elastomer mount using the hybrid simulation technique. For real-time hybrid simulations, the MR elastomer mount and the control system are used as an experimental part, which is installed on the shaking table, and an equipment on the table is used as a numerical part. A suitable control algorithm is designed for the real-time hybrid simulations to avoid the responses of the equipment’s natural frequency by tracking the frequencies of the responses. After performing a series of real-time hybrid simulation on the adaptive mount system and the passive-type mount system under sinusoidal excitations, this study compares the effectiveness of the adaptive mount system over its passive counterpart. The results show that the proposed adaptive elastomer mount system outperforms the passive-type mount system in reducing the responses of the equipment for the excitations considered in this study.