Magnetorheological Fluids based Dampers for On-board Components in Spacecraft

"Vibration control techniques for on-board components are very essential during high attitude, weight shift and acceleration in a spacecraft. Conventional mechanisms of damping such as hydraulic dampers and springs do not exhibit such high-speed responsesrequired by these applications. The other class of sensor-actuator controlled damping technique based on piezoelectricity with electronic sensor circuitry and piezoactuators require large power sources. Semi-active control devices based onMagnetorheological (MR) fluids have been widely recognized for vibration control systems. Current research interests are towards MR fluids synthesized using micron size magnetic particles, which are not very sensitive to the damping application.Materials Modification Inc (MMI) proposes to develop a low cost, high performance MR fluid based vibration control system for damping the structural vibrations of on-board components in spacecrafts. The MR fluids proposed for use in the damping systemshave nanomagnetic particles dispersed in them. The use of nanomagnetic particles as against the currently used micromagnetic particles will show a significant change in sensitivity, response time, stability and unsedimentation owing to better uniformmagnetization and low hysteresis. Phase I effort involves the fabrication of a simple MR fluid-based damper prototype. The damper characteristics will be experimentally determined to demonstrate the responsiveness of