Development, Dynamic Characterization, and Response Prediction of an Energy-Dissipating Magnetorheological Fluid Elastomeric Damper

In helicopter rotor systems, effective suppression of lead–lag vibration requires dampers with reliable load transfer, appropriate stiffness matching, tunable damping, and efficient energy dissipation. However, conventional lead–lag dampers often suffer from limited stiffness–damping adjustability and sealing-related constraints. Here, we developed a magnetorheological fluid elastomeric (MRFE) damper by integrating magnetorheological fluid with a rubber elastomer. An elastomer system with a target shear modulus of 0.72 MPa was obtained through systematic design of the rubber formulation, rubber–metal bonding, and vulcanization process. Dynamic characterization showed that the dissipated energy increased markedly with amplitude but only slightly with frequency, whereas applied current exerted the strongest influence on the MRFE response. As the current increased from 0 to 1.5 A, the dissipated energy, effective stiffness, and equivalent damping coefficient increased by 1901.5%, 491.0%, and 961.1%, respectively. The zero-current effective stiffness of 0.443 kN/mm closely matched the required baseline stiffness of 0.44 kN/mm. For inverse current prediction, the improved Transformer model with hyperparameters optimized using PSO achieved a 72.04% lower RMSE than the differential evolution-assisted one-dimensional long short-term memory (DE-1DLSTM) model. These results suggest the potential of the MRFE for stiffness-matched support, controllable energy dissipation, and data-driven current prediction in rotor lead–lag vibration mitigation.