Numerical Study of Rotary Magnetorheological Seat Suspension on the Impact Protection

Recently, linear magnetorheological (MR) dampers have been widely utilised for impact protection of seat suspensions. However, the viscous force of the linear MR damper increases seriously with the increase of impact velocity. This results in a sharp increase of the total output force of the seat suspension, which may damage the suspension structure and lead to occupant injuries. To address this issue, the performance of a seat suspension installed with a rotary MR damper to improve the impact protection performance is investigated in this paper. Specifically, the mathematical models for the linear MR seat suspension and the rotary MR seat suspension are established. The impact protection performance of these two suspensions are numerically compared by the transient analysis and the dynamic impact simulation. Both the transient analysis and the dynamic simulation indicate that the rotary MR damper seat suspension is less sensitive to the impact velocity and can provide better impact protection performance.