Magnetic fluid shock absorbers (MFSAs) have been successfully applied in eliminating the micro-vibration of the spacecraft’s flexible structures. The method of enhancing the damping of MFSAs has always been the key issue. The tree frog’s toe pads exhibit the strong adhesion, which inspired us to learn from their surface structure. We got hundreds of scanning electron microscope images of the tree frog’s toe pads surface and used the edge extraction algorithm to obtain the result that the geometric shape with the largest proportion in these images is hexagon. According to this result, hexagonal surface textures were added to the inner surface of the MFSA and a small part of the MFSA was taken for further simulation analysis. The flow distribution of the magnetic fluid (MF) acquired from the simulation clearly illustrates that the surface textures cause vortexes formation in the MF layer. These vortexes increase the shear rate between the MF layers, thereby augmenting the flow resistance. The vibration reduction experiments were carried out and MFSAs employed in these experiments were fabricated by 3D printing technology. Consequently, the bionic textures mimicking the tree frog’s toe pads surface can significantly improve the damping performance of MFSAs.

Magnetic fluid shock absorbers (MFSAs) have been successfully utilized to eliminate microvibrations of flexible spacecraft structures. The method of enhancing the damping efficiency of MFSAs has always been a critical issue. To address this, we drew inspiration from the tree frog’s toe pads, which exhibit strong friction due to their unique surface structure. Using 3D printing, we integrated bionic textures copied from tree frog’s toe pad surfaces onto MFSAs, which is the first time to combine bionic design and MFSAs. Additionally, this is also the first time that surface textures have been applied to MFSAs. However, we also had to consider practical engineering applications and manufacturing convenience, so we modified the shape of bionic textures. To do so, we used an edge extraction algorithm for image processing and obtained recognition results. After thorough consideration, we chose hexagon as the shape of surface textures instead of bionic textures. For theoretical analysis, a magnetic field–flow field coupling dynamic model for MFSAs was built for the first time to simulate the magnetic fluid (MF) flow in one oscillation cycle. Using this model, the flow rate contours of the MF were obtained. It was observed that textures cause vortexes to form in the MF layer, which produced an additional velocity field. This increased the shear rate, ultimately leading to an increase in flow resistance. Finally, we conducted vibration reduction experiments and estimated damping characteristics of the proposed MFSAs to prove the effectiveness of both bionic texture and hexagon surface textures. Fortunately, we concluded that hexagon surface textures not only improve the damping efficiency of MFSAs but also require less MF mass.