Design and novel type of a magnetorheological damper featuring piston bypass hole

This work proposes a novel type of magnetorheological (MR) damper configuration from which an excellent ride comfort can be achieved without using a sophisticated controller scheme. The proposed novel MR damper is featured by piston bypass holes to achieve low slope of the damping force in the pre-yield (low-piston-velocity) region and high magnitude of the damping force in the post-yield (high-piston-velocity) region. A mathematical model for the damping force of the proposed MR damper is formulated followed by the investigation on damping characteristics with respect to several geometrical design parameters such as the number of piston bypass hole, the diameter of the hole, the gap size of the orifice, the orifice length, the diameter of the bobbin, and the height of the coil. After selecting the main design parameters from the simulation results, numerical simulations for the damping force characteristics are conducted with eight design parameter sets to evaluate the significant effect on the damping force performance. The proposed MR dampers are then manufactured with the same design parameter sets and the damping force characteristics are experimentally obtained and compared with the analytical simulation results. It is identified from the parametric investigations that the size and the number of the piston bypass hole are very important on damping force characteristics of the proposed MR damper.