Designing an attachable and power-efficient all-in-one module of a tunable vibration absorber based on magnetorheological elastomer

Abstract

This study designs an all-in-one module of a tunable vibration absorber (TVA) using magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) considering easy installation in a plug-and-play concept on an actual industrial plant. The proposed system is designed to overcome several limitations on a typical system composed of an electromagnet and MRE TVA, such as environmental robustness, bulky size, high power consumption and complex installation on an actual plant. The designed TVA module contains sensors for MRE tuning control feedback, an energy-efficient magnetic field density generator, MRE and absorber mass. A novel but simple magnetic field generator is proposed using a small brushless DC gimbal motor and permanent magnets to reduce unnecessary energy consumption for long-term operation. The TVA module is designed so that it can be easily attached to an existing target system, such as a linear compressor. Using the embedded sensors in the module, it can automatically tune the MRE stiffness adaptively to the disturbance vibration on the target system. The prototype performance is validated with experiments showing that it can provide approximately 94% of stiffness change and 58% of vibration suppression for disturbance in the frequency range of 51.6–71.9 Hz.