Rotary Magnetorheological Damper (RMD) for Armored Vehicle Bench Seats

The current energy attenuation seat systems inside a Stryker combat vehicle can be more space efficient and are designed to protect only 50th percentile male occupant using metal distortion type energy absorber. Consolidating seating to bench seats will reduce the overall footprint of the seat. Additionally, conventional passive dampers such as seat cushions made of linear elastomers are dense, heavy, and bulky to absorb such high energy ballistic shock while active dampers are ineffective for impact attenuation due to the latency associated with the feedback control system. To address the above challenges, we propose to design and develop an energy attenuation bench seat system with semi-active Rotary Magnetorheological Damper (RMD) and passive Magnetorheological Elastomeric (MRE) damping cushions. The RMD device is connected to the existing bench seat design and absorb the explosive energy in both horizontal and vertical directions; it also uses the existing metal deformation type dampers for base damping. The proposed RMD device will be semi-active requiring no complex sensors and will only require minimum power only during the event of an impulse/explosion. In addition, MRE with sheet magnets will create lightweight MRE damping cushions for effective isolation of the initial shock at seat pan and back.