Modeling, heat dissipation design, and force tracking control for temperature-dependent hysteresis of magnetorheological damper

The temperature-dependence (T-dependence) characteristics of magnetorheological fluids (MRFs) cause the damping force of magnetorheological dampers (MRDs) to change with temperature. The rapid temperature rise can lead to performance degradation or even failure of MRFs, reduced damping force of MRDs, and decline in control performance. In this paper, numerical simulations and predictions of the temperature rise characteristics of the MRD are performed and heat sinks are designed and optimized. The experimental results verify the efficiency of the simulations and predictions, and the heat sinks can significantly reduce the rate of temperature increase and improve the ability of the damper to operate for long hours. In order to accurately compensate for T-dependence characteristics of the MRD, a T-dependence hysteresis model and a model-based feedforward force tracking control method with disturbance observation of the MRD are proposed and validated by experiments. The experimental results indicate that the proposed T-dependence model has better prediction accuracy than the general hysteresis model, and the feedforward control method achieves good force tracking performance even without expensive force sensors.