Planar arrangement of permanent magnets in design of a magneto-solid damper by finite element method

This article studies the energy dissipation mechanism of a proposed magneto-solid damper using a three-dimensional finite element model developed in COMSOL Multiphysics software. The energy dissipation mechanism of the magneto-solid damper dissipates energy through combined actions of friction and eddy current damping. The key components of the magneto-solid damper are a steel plate, two copper plates placed on two sides of the steel plate in parallel, and two planar arrays of permanent magnets each one placed between the steel plate and one of the copper plates. These arrays are kept away from the steel and copper plates through narrow gaps; the gaps between them and the steel plate are filled with thin friction pads made of non-magnetic materials. The attractive magnetic interaction between the permanent magnet arrays and the steel plate provides the normal force for the friction developed between the friction pads and the steel plate when the permanent magnet arrays move relative to the steel plate. The motion of the permanent magnet arrays relative to the copper plates, on the other hand, provides the eddy current damping. The main contribution of this article is to optimize the pole arrangement of the permanent magnets and demonstrate that how the optimum pole arrangement can affect the energy dissipation capacity of the magneto-solid damper. The analysis results show that, for a given number and size of the permanent magnets, alternate arrangement of the poles of permanent magnets along the direction of their motion is the most optimal case resulting in large and smooth hysteresis force–displacement loops. This pole arrangement has also been used to find the optimum size of the steel and copper plates by addressing edge and skin effects in the design of the damper.