Performance prediction of serpentine magnetorheological valves under various gap size

Magnetorheological (MR) valve is one of the key components in regulating the magnetorheological (MR) fluid flow in MR devices. Due to MR properties enabling magnetic modifications, many MR valve designs have been introduced and are widely utilized in MR devices. Serpentine MR valve has a potential in improving the MR devices performance, whereby using this method it can help to increase the effective region of the valve. Thus, this article is comparing the pressure drops generated under various gap sizes in the effective regions of MR valve. Three different gap sizes are considered for this study. To provide a fair comparison, several parameters are fixed; the size of the MR valves, the number of coil turns and the power consumption. In order to demonstrate the MR valve performance, the pressure drops are calculated based on the mathematical equations derived from MR valve models and the magnetic fields derived from Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM) software. The results of the simulations are compared to various gap sizes and, discussed. (paper)