Aiming at the tough requirements for safety and maintainability in mobile hydraulic systems, in this paper, an active fault-tolerant control (FTC) system is proposed against the valve faults of an independent metering valve. Not only moderate faults of activated valves, but also significant faults and un-activated valve faults are considered. Without additional hardware redundancy, analytical redundancy is derived by the coordinate control of other fault-free valves. Accordingly, an FTC system in parallel with a normal controller is designed based on the pressure feedback. It consists of a set of reconfigurable controllers and a decision mechanism. The control signals, control loops and operating modes can all be precisely reconfigured to adaptively match unmodeled fault dynamics. A bumpless transfer controller based on a latent tracking loop is designed to smooth the switching between the normal controller and FTC. Consequently, random valve faults can be tolerated with minor degradations in motion tracking and energy-saving performance. The feasibility of the FTC system is evaluated by a 2-ton excavator.

In this article, the nonlinear damping characteristics of magnetorheological damper are expressed with hyperbolic tangent model to simulate its mechanical experimental results. The fitted hyperbolic tangent model can represent hysteretic behavior for magnetorheological damper exactly. Based on the hyperbolic tangent model, a quarter-car model with magnetorheological damper is established, and a new hybrid fuzzy and fuzzy proportional-integral-derivative (HFFPID) controller integrated with hybrid fuzzy control and fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative control is developed to improve the semi-active suspension performance, which can overcome the absence of precise mathematical model. Furthermore, numerical simulations for fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative (PID), hybrid fuzzy proportional–integral–derivative (HFPID), and HFFPID controllers are investigated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. The simulation results show that the body acceleration, suspension deflection, and tyre displacement can be reduced more effectively using HFFPID controller under sinusoidal road excitation. It can be further concluded that the suspension performance is improved more effectively by using HFFPID controller under random road excitation, especially in the peak points.

Magnetorheological (MR) brake is a sort of electromagnetic brake that uses the controllable output characteristics of MR fluid for braking. In this paper, an MR brake with a double brake disc was developed to improve the braking performance of conventional MR brakes. The effective damping gaps were increased from the traditional two sections to four sections by increasing the single brake disc of the conventional MR brake to a double brake disc. By reasonably arranging the non-magnetic sleeve inside the MR brake, the magnetic flux lines were better guided to the effective damping gaps, which increased the utilization rate of the magnetic field, effectively enhanced the braking performance, and also reduced the braking power consumption. The structure and working principle of the MR brake with double brake disc were discussed. The magnetic field of the proposed MR brake was analyzed by ANSYS software, and the theoretical result of braking performance was obtained by combining the established mechanical model. The braking performance test rig was setup to investigate the torque performance of the MR brake. The experimental results show that the maximum braking torque is 18.01 N·m at the applied current of 2.0 A and the rotational speed of 400 r·min⁻¹, and the simulation values are basically verified. In addition, the results indicate that the constant torque characteristic of the MR brake is relatively stable, and the torque is almost unaffected by the changes of rotational speed. The results can provide some guidance for the structural design and optimization of the MR actuators.

This article outlines a compact annular-radial-orifice flow magnetorheological valve through theoretical calculation, simulation analysis and experiment verification. The fluid flow paths of this proposed magnetorheological valve consist of a single annular flow channel, a single radial flow channel and an orifice flow channel through structural design. The finite element modelling and analysis of the magnetorheological valve was carried out using ANSYS/Emag software, including achieving optimal magnetic field distribution and yield stress in the annular flow path and radial flow path, respectively. Moreover, this proposed magnetorheological valve was prototyped and evaluated experimentally, showing that the magnetorheological valve has significantly improved its efficiency, especially the pressure drop at the 1.0 mm width of annular resistance gap and 0.5 mm width of radial resistance gap.

In order to reduce vehicle vibration during driving conditions, a fuzzy sliding mode control strategy (FSMC) for semi-active air suspension based on the magnetorheological (MR) damper is proposed. The MR damper used in the semi-active air suspension system was tested and analyzed. Based on the experimental data, the genetic algorithm was used to identify the parameters of the improved hyperbolic tangent model, which was derived for the MR damper. At the same time, an adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was used to build the reverse model of the MR damper. The model of a quarter vehicle semi-active air suspension system equipped with a MR damper was established. Aiming at the uncertainty of the air suspension system, fuzzy control was used to adjust the boundary layer of the sliding mode control, which can effectively suppress the influence of chattering on the control accuracy and ensure system stability. Taking random road excitation and impact road excitation as the input signal, the simulation analysis of passive air suspension, semi-active air suspension based on SMC and FSMC was carried out, respectively. The results show that the semi-active air suspension based on FSMC has better vibration attenuating performance and ride comfort.