Review of Driver Seat Suspension using MR Fluid Damper

Abstract

The automobile market become competitive based on the dynamic comfort of a seat. It is through the seat that vibrations enter the body of the driver in large proportion. In long distance driving, the driver feels headache and body pain due to the vibration of the seat. Today in the world of competition every automobile industry wants to give some more features in their design to get attraction of the customers and the comfort is very important feature to get attraction of the buyers. Also the buyers are also aware of comfort of vehicles. Till recently, a lot of focus has been on a static comfort of seats, while limited attention has been paid on dynamic comfort. Semi active control system are reliable and versatile as also they consume less power, hence they are becoming popular. In a particular Magneto- rheological (MR) fluids have been found to be effective for use in vibration control actuators. The paper gives a glimpse of design of driver seat suspension system model with MR Fluid damper under harmonic excitation with finite element. We have studied the response of MR damper to vibration, which plays an important role in defining the dynamic comfort. MR fluid damper for driver seat suspension reduces vibration amplitude significantly compared to passive dampers. Semi-active control with MR damper provides 24% better vehicle road holding than fully active systems.