Model-free fuzzy control of a magnetorheological elastomer vibration isolation system: analysis and experimental evaluation

This paper addresses the problem of micro-vibration control of a precision vibration isolation system with a magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) isolator and fuzzy control strategy. Firstly, a polyurethane matrix MRE isolator working in the shear-compression mixed mode is introduced. The dynamic characteristic is experimentally tested, and the range of the frequency shift and the model parameters of the MRE isolator are obtained from experimental results. Secondly, a new semi-active control law is proposed, which uses isolation structure displacement and relative displacement between the isolation structure and base as the inputs. Considering the nonlinearity of the MRE isolator and the excitation uncertainty of an isolation system, the designed semi-active fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is independent of a system model and is robust. Finally, the numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the FLC with single-frequency and multiple-frequency excitation, respectively, and the experimental results show that the acceleration transmissibility is reduced by 54.04% at most, which verifies the effectiveness of the designed semi-active FLC. Moreover, the advantages of the approach are demonstrated in comparison to the passive control and ON-OFF control.