On the design and development of a magneto-rheological mount

This paper evaluates the performance of a Magneto-Rheological (MR) mount. T he mount incorporates MR fluid in a conventional fluid mount to open and cl ose an inertia track between the fluid chambers of the mount. It is shown t hat such switching of the inertia track improves the mount's isolation effe ct by eliminating the large transmissibility peak that commonly exists at f requencies larger than the notch frequency for conventional fluid mounts. T he switching frequencies of the MR mount are evaluated based on the paramet ers of the mount. A simple control scheme for switching the mount between t he open and closed states is proposed, and the performance of the controlle d mount is compared with conventional mounts. A sensitivity analysis is con ducted to evaluate the effect of parameter errors in estimating the switchi ng frequencies and mount performance. The results show that the switching f requencies can be accurately determined from mount parameters that are easi ly measured or estimated.