Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for Magnetorheological Fluid Selection in Automotive Brakes

Magnetorheological brakes based on MR technology are being investigated for their potential use for automotive purposes. Among the design decisions, the selection of an appropriate MR fluid for the brake application remains an unexplored key issue. This article proposes an MCDM-based framework comprising analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) to select an appropriate MR fluid for the automotive brake application. Three commercially available MR fluids from Lord Corporation (MRF-122EG, MRF-132DG, and MRF-140CG) are assessed against six criteria, viz. density, temperature range, yield stress, viscosity, magnetic saturation limit, and solid content. Considering all the criteria, the AHP ranked MRF-140CG highest, while TOPSIS chose MRF-122EG. Excluding the temperature range, both methods converged on MRF-122EG as the optimal choice. The proposed framework can be used for the MR fluid selection problem of other MR devices as well.