High performance vibration isolation strategies with magnetorheological elastomer (MRE)

Abstract

This research studies a vibration isolating system for a miniature linear compressor. A passive vibration method with and without an absorber and a tunable vibration absorber (TVA) are designed and their experimental performances are compared. For the tunable vibration absorber, magnetorheological elastomer (MRE), a type of smart material, is used to design a robust and remote controlled vibration isolation system. For this purpose, MRE samples are prepared and properties are tested to validate its use in the system. Frequency responses and acceleration of the compressor with the designed isolation system under different magnetic flux are measured and processed. Experiments have been conducted on the designed MRE TVA to obtain the frequency response functions under different magnetic flux. It has shown that the TVA is tunable from 33Hz to 60Hz in 240mT. Because of this tunable property, it has a wide band frequency suppression performance as well as adaptive vibration suppressing performance. To show the process of the adaptive suppression, the acceleration of the compressor was obtained under different magnetic flux and different compressor operation rate. From the results, it is concluded that with a feedback loop, the MRE TVA has potential to be used as a real time adaptive vibration suppressor. Through the experimental results comparison of the mentioned three isolation methods, the designed MRE TVA is validated to be a suitable vibration isolating system for a miniature compressor in terms of robustness, remote controlled tuning and real time adaptive suppression.