Magnetorheological damper temperature characteristics and control-oriented temperature-revised model

Accurate control of the magnetorheological damper (MRD) damping force and current is necessary to realize the effective semi-active suspension control. However, the temperature sensitivity of the magnetorheological fluid makes the MRD force strongly dependent on temperature changes, leading to the problem of the model mismatch and degradation of control effect. In this paper, the experimental study of MRD at different currents and velocities from −40 °C to 80 °C was implemented. It reveals the characteristic of MRD damping loss at low temperatures and viscous damping reduction at high temperatures. On this basis, a new parametrized hyperbolic hysteresis model with temperature as an independent variable is proposed, providing an accurate description of the viscosity, stiffness, and hysteresis characteristics of the MRD. A simplified temperature-revised inverse model is proposed to calculate the driving current with demanding force. It could improve the accuracy of driving current by 12.79% and demanding force by 18.67%. A process in the loop simulation is implemented to validate the inverse model with a modified non-chattering algorithm. Together with the inverse model, the proposed algorithm could realize continuous current change, reducing the RMS of acceleration by 14% on road of class B. Furthermore, the temperature compensation could improve the control effect by 19.78%.