Bifurcations and chaos of a vibration isolation system with magneto-rheological damper

Magneto-rheological (MR) damper possesses inherent hysteretic characteristics. We investigate the resulting nonlinear behaviors of a two degree-of-freedom (2-DoF) MR vibration isolation system under harmonic external excitation. A MR damper is identified by employing the modified Bouc-wen hysteresis model. By numerical simulation, we characterize the nonlinear dynamic evolution of period-doubling, saddle node bifurcating and inverse period-doubling using bifurcation diagrams of variations in frequency with a fixed amplitude of the harmonic excitation. The strength of chaos is determined by the Lyapunov exponent (LE) spectrum. Semi-physical experiment on the 2-DoF MR vibration isolation system is proposed. We trace the time history and phase trajectory under certain values of frequency of the harmonic excitation to verify the nonlinear dynamical evolution of period-doubling bifurcations to chaos. The largest LEs computed with the experimental data are also presented, confirming the chaotic motion in the experiment. We validate the chaotic motion caused by the hysteresis of the MR damper, and show the transitions between distinct regimes of stable motion and chaotic motion of the 2-DoF MR vibration isolation system for variations in frequency of external excitation.