A novel adjustable magnetorheological fluid gradient material of low frequency vibration isolation: a theoretical and experimental study

In this paper, a novel adjustable magnetorheological fluid (MRF) gradient material for low-frequency control is proposed, and the vibration isolation performance of this gradient material is investigated theoretically and experimentally. The gradient material has an excellent ability to control the sound waves and vibrations. However, the currently prepared gradient material does not have the parameter adjustability. At the same time, the MRF can change its material parameters according to the external magnetic field. After applying the traveling magnetic field (TMF) to the MRF with continuously varying and adjustable magnetic induction strength, its material parameters will also be continuously varying and adjustable to constitute an adjustable gradient material. In order to investigate the vibration transfer characteristics of this adjustable gradient material, this paper establishes a micro-mechanical model of MRF and theoretically investigates and numerically calculates the mechanical impedance and vibration transfer characteristics of the adjustable gradient material through the machine-electric analogy theory. At the same time, experimental research was conducted by building an experimental platform to conduct experiments. The results show that the novel adjustable gradient material composed of a TMF and MRF has a good vibration suppression effect in the low-frequency range (10 ∼ 60 Hz) with the vibration level difference of up to 30 dB or more, which has a broad application prospect in the field of vibration control.