Modeling and characterization of novel magnetorheological（MR） cell with individual currents

Magnetorheological（MR） cell with multi-coil was designed to enlarge the range of controllable transmission torque by increasing the effective length. Individual input current was proposed to maximize its potential for reducing power consumption and generating large yield stress. Finite element analysis was performed to analyze magnetic field distribution, based on which a prototype MR cell was fabricated and tested to investigate the performance of various combinations of individual input currents. A good correlation was identified between experimental results and FEA predications. The results show that the power consumption can be reduced to 42.4%, maintaining large transmission torque, by distributing the total current（2 A） to three individual magnetic coils. In addition, optimal results of four input currents considering a multi-objective function are obtained by changing the weighting factor λ. The advantage of this design, such as lower power consumption and more control flexibility, makes it more competitive in engineering applications that require large energy consumption.