COMPARISON OF DAMPING FORCE MODELS FOR AN ELECTRORHEOLOGICAL FLUID DAMPER.

In this work, five different models are proposed to predict the field-dependent damping force of an electrorheological (ER) damper and are compared. These are: the Bingham plastic model, the hysteretic Bingham plastic model, the hysteretic biviscous model, the Bouc-Wen model and the hydro-mechanical model. After briefly describing the inherent characteristics of each model, model parameters are identified using a set of experimental data that are obtained by changing electric fields and excitation frequencies. The identified parameters are analysed and used to reconstruct the damping force – the piston velocity plot that directly indicates the hysteresis behaviour of the ER damper and compared with the measured hysteresis loop. In addition, the damping force error between the prediction and experiment is evaluated for each model.