Experimental Investigations on Damping Properties of Electrorheological Fluid Damper
Li Bin(1),Yang Zhichun(1,2)
(1 Institute of Aircraft Structures, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi' an 710072, P.R. China)
(2 State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis of Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023, P.R. China)

Abstract: A type of sliding multi-electrode electrorheological fluid damper has been designed and manufactured. Dynamic experiments were perform ed to measure its damping characteristics by sine excitation. The force-displacement and force-velocity hysteretic characteristics of the damper were studied and its cyclic energy dissipation and equivalent viscous damping properties were also analyzed. The results show that the cyclic energy dissipation of the damper and equivalent damping coefficient increase with increasing electric field strength. The damping characteristics represent a combination of viscous damping and Coulomb damping, and the latter is dominant in the controllable damping force of the damper. The phenomenon, appearing multi-enclosed domains in the F vs V hysteretic cycles when the movement of the damper is fast, manifests that rheological behaviors of ER fluid is related to the shear strain rate of fluid between electrodes. On other words, the damper is a nonlinear system, its dynamic characteristics will be influenced by the applied electric field and velocity of the damper.
Keywords: ER-damper, dynamic test, equivalent damping, hysteretic characteristics.