Design and performance research of an adaptive damper composed of electrorheological fluids and piezoelectric ceramics

A new kind of adaptive damper composed of electrorheological (ER) fluids and piezoelectric ceramics is proposed in this paper. Its feature is that piezoelectric ceramics respond to outside vibrations and provide an electric field to solidify the ER fluid in the damper so that the auto-adjustment of damping is realized. According to the change of the frequency and amplitude of the outside vibrations, the response of an ER fluid changes and the adaptive control of vibration is realized. Compared with ordinary ER dampers, there is no high voltage sources and computer control equipment in the damper system. The computer simulation shows that the vibration suppression effect of the damper increases with the stimulating force, but the vibration suppression effect decreases when the stimulating frequency increases. In the test of the damper's performance we observe manifest vibration suppression results.