Phase based stiffness tuning algorithm for a magnetorheological elastomer dynamic vibration absorber

This paper presents a phase based stiffness tuning algorithm to overcome the uncertainty of the relation between the magnetic current and the natural frequency for magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) dynamic vibration absorbers (DVA) caused by the nonlinearity of the MRE. The phase difference of the relative acceleration of the DVA mass and the absolute acceleration of the primary system was used to check whether the natural frequency of the DVA is adjusted to the excitation frequency. The magnetic current was controlled by the phase difference, which made the proposed algorithm not rely on the model of the MRE DVA. Both the simulation and the experiment demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is efficient for MRE DVA in rapidly tracking the excitation frequency.