A small-scale study of magneto-rheological track vibration isolation system

A magneto-rheological bearing (MRB) is proposed to improve the vibration isolation performance of a floating slab track system. However, it’s difficult to carry out the test for the full-scale track vibration isolation system in the laboratory. In this paper, the research is based on scale analysis of the floating slab track system, from the point view of the dimensionless of the dynamic characteristics of physical quantity, to establish a small scale test bench system for the MRBs. A small scale MRB with squeeze mode using magneto-rheological grease is designed and its performance is tested. The major parameters of a small scale test bench are obtained according to the similarity theory. The force transmissibility ratio and the relative acceleration transmissibility ratio are selected as evaluation index of system similarity. Dynamics of these two similarity systems are calculated by MATLAB experiment. Simulation results show that the dynamics of the prototype and scale models have good similarity. Further, a test bench is built according to the small-scale model parameter analysis. The experiment shows that the bench testing results are consistency with that of theoretical model in evaluating the vibration force and acceleration. Therefore, the small-scale study of magneto-rheological track vibration isolation system based on similarity theory reveals the isolation performance of a real slab track prototype system.