Structure Design And Pressure Drop Analysis Of Magnetorheological Valves Considering Radial And Annular Fluid Flow Channels

In general, the traditional hydraulic control valves rely on the relative movement betweenmoveable valve spool and fixed valve body to achieve the relative control of pressure andflow. Due to the moveable mechanical parts, some problems would be arisen, such ascomplex structure, high machining precision requirement, low work reliability etc. It’scommon to see that the movement of the moving parts is also not easy to control on thisaccount. Since the emergence of intelligent magnetorheological (MR) fluid, the problem canbe effectively solved by intelligent control valve which depend on intelligent fluid.According to the character of MR fluid, a type of MR fluid controlling valve which hasno relatively moving parts was designed. There was an annular flowing structure betweentraditional MR valve spool and valve body. In this paper, a new type of MR valve with radialflowing structure is designed. At the same time, the performance of two different MR valveswith the damping clearance is compared in the same magnetic characteristics.The main contents of this research were as follows:1. The structure of radial flowing MR valve, the key technologies and problems of thevalve were presented in this research. Considering the design requirements, the key size ofMR valve was selected preliminary. Then the magnetic circuit was calculated, the main size ofthe MR valve was verified, and the number of coils was determined. In guarantee under thecondition of constant magnetic field, the design introduced the annular flowing structurewhich had the same coil turns and damping clearance with radial flowing MR valve. Themagnetic circuit calculation and analysis were completed. Then the feasibility of the structurewas verified.2. Pressure drop characteristics of those two kinds of MR valves were analyzed. Themodels for pressure drop of those two kinds of MR valves were built, and pressure drop werepredicted.3. Using the ANSYS software with EMAG module, the radial flowing and annularflowing MR valves were simulated separately. According to the structure of the lines ofmagnetic force distribution in the simulation, the feasibility of the structure was defined atfirst. The pressure drop of these two structures and the pressure drop performances withdifferent damping clearance were compared.4. These two kinds of MR valves’ pressure drop and velocity were analyzed by Fluentsoftware, and was compared with the electromagnetic field simulation. It explained theinfluence of flow channel on the pressure drop further. 5. The dynamic performance experiment system which was applied to analyze thepressure drop characteristics of the radial flowing and annular flowing MR valves wasestablished with the LabVIEW software. The change rule of two kinds of MR valves’pressuredrop was analyzed with different loads and exciting currents. The results were compared withthe electromagnetic simulation and magnetic fluid simulation.