Identification of the Damping Law of an Electro-Rheological Fluid: A Sequential Filtering Approach

In this paper an approach is described to identifying the damping law of an electro-rheological (ER) fluid in vibration. The damping law is obtained by employing a nonlinear, sequential filter to estimate the parameters associated with an nth-power velocity model of the damping mechanism. To establish experimental requirements the application of the technique is first examined under controlled conditions in a numerical study. The feasibility of the approach is then demonstrated in an experimental study to identify the damping law of a prototype ER damper.