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This paper presents a smart passive MR damper with fast-responsive characteristics for impact mitigation. The hybrid powering system of the MR damper, composed of batteries and self-powering component, enables the damping of the MR damper to be negatively proportional to the impact velocity, which is called rate-dependent softening effect. This effect can keep the damping force as the maximum allowable constant force under different impact speed and thus improve the efficiency of the shock energy mitigation. The structure, prototype and working principle of the new MR damper are presented firstly. Then a vibration platform was used to characterize the dynamic property and the self-powering capability of the new MR damper. The impact mitigation performance of the new MR damper was evaluated using a drop hammer and compared with a passive damper. The comparison results demonstrate that the damping force generated by the new MR damper can be constant over a large range of impact velocity while the passive damper cannot. The special characteristics of the new MR damper can improve its energy dissipation efficiency over a wide range of impact speed and keep occupants and mechanical structures safe.

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The velocity sensitive characteristic of the conventional linear magnetorheological (MR) damper is undesirable in the application of impact protection. It will induce large damping forces when the damper suffers high velocity impacts, whilst comprising the energy dissipation efficiency of the damper and posing a serious threat to occupants and mechanical structures. This work reports a new MR impact damper (NMRID) with low velocity sensitivity. Unlike the conventional magnetorheological impact damper (CMRID) in which MR fluids (MRFs) flow from one chamber to the other through a small annular gap between the piston and cylinder, the NMRID has a whole annular gap between the shaft and cylinder that is filled with MRFs, and the MRFs work in a pure shear mode without any liquid flow. In this work, a NMRID and a CMRID were prototyped. The velocity sensitivity of these two impact dampers was compared via numerical analysis and experimental impact tests. The analysis and test results indicate that NMRID possesses a much lower velocity sensitivity than the CMRID; the dynamic range of the NMRID decreases less than CMRID with the increase of nominal impact velocity. Then, to demonstrate the controllability of NMRID, impact tests with a bang-bang control were implemented, and the peak force of NMRID was successfully controlled around a target force under different levels of nominal impact velocity. This research proves that the designed NMRID is less sensitive to velocity than the CMRID and the NMRID has good controllability, which demonstrates that the NMRID can serve as a better candidate than CMRID in applications with high impact velocity.

Magnetorheological elastomer (MRE), as a field-dependent smart material, has been widely applied on base isolation for vibration reduction. However, the MRE isolation system often experiences large drift during strong earthquake, which may cause mechanical failure. Additionally, its performance among low frequency range is still limited. To tackle these problems, this paper proposes a hybrid vibration isolation system which is composed of four stiffness softening MRE isolators and a passive ball-screw inerter. A simulation was developed to prove the effectiveness of the hybrid isolation system before the earthquake tests. A scaled three-storey building was developed based on the scaling laws as the isolated objective in earthquake experiments. Besides, a linear quadratic regulation (LQR) controller was utilised to control the mechanical properties of the hybrid MRE isolation system. Finally, the evaluation experiments of the building under a scaled Kobe earthquake excitation were conducted. The experimental results show that the simulation and the experimental results were in agreement, validating that the hybrid isolation system could provide a better vibration mitigation performance, in the meanwhile, reduce the displacement amplitude of the isolation system.