DIRECTIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF COMPOSITE STRUCTURES ENERGY ABSORPTION USING MAGNETORHEOLOGICAL FLUIDS

摘要

The compatibility of magnetorheological (MR) fluids to directional enhancement of composite structures energy absorption has been investigated in this paper. This work is a part of CRC-ACS research program that aims to develop retrofit technologies for aged helicopters. Firstly, numerical parametric studies were conducted on identified design parameters of MR damper. This is followed by exploring the experimental data obtained from existing MR damper. The numerical studies showed that the piston head radius is the key dominant effect in providing high damping force. This, however, also resulted in large change of the MR damper weight due to significant increase of MR fluids volume, as compared to other design parameters. The analysis of experimental result shows that the damping force is equivalent to roughly two-fifths of the mean crushing force of an off-the-shelf composite tube with similar dimensions of the existing MR damper. MR fluids and damper show promising quality to improve composite structures as systems for crashworthiness.