Vibration control of a smart material based damper system considering temperature variation and time delay

Summary This paper presents vibration control responses of an electrorheological (ER) damper system subjected to temperature variation and time delay. The field-dependent yield stress of the ER fluid is experimentally evaluated at various temperatures and the dynamic characteristics of the ER damper are investigated in order to obtain the time constant. These two properties are integrated with the governing model of a quarter car ER suspension system, and a sliding mode controller is formulated. Vibration control responses of a quarter car model installed with the ER damper system are evaluated under bump excitation.