Magnetorheological (MR) fluids are capable of manifesting a rheological behaviour change by means of a magnetic field application and can be employed in many complex systems in many technical fields. One successful example is their use in the development of dampers: magnetorheological dampers (MRDs) are widespread in vibration control systems, as well as civil engineering applications (i.e., earthquake or seismic protection), impact absorption and vibration isolation technology in industrial engineering, and advanced prosthetics in biomedical fields. In the past, many studies have been conducted on MRDs modeling and characterization, but they have usually been focused more on the theoretical models than on the experimental issues. In this work, an overview of both of them is proposed. In particular, after an introduction to the physics of the magnetorheological effect, a short review of the main mathematical models of MRDs is proposed. Finally, in the second part of this study an overview of the main issues that occur in MRDs experimental characterization is reported and discussed.

Active and passive vibration control systems are of paramount importance in many engineering applications. If an external load excites a structure’s resonance and the damping is too low, detrimental events, such as crack initiation, growth and, in the worst case, fatigue failure, can be entailed. Damping systems can be commonly found in applications such as industrial machines, vehicles, buildings, turbomachinery blades, and so forth. Active control systems usually achieve higher damping effectiveness than passive ones, but they need a sensor to detect the working conditions that require damping system activation. Recently, the development of such systems in rotating structures has received considerable interest among designers. As a result, the development of vibration monitoring equipment in rotating structures is also a topic of particular interest. In this respect, a reliable, inexpensive and wireless monitoring system is of utmost importance. Typically, optical systems are used to measure vibrations, but they are expensive and require rather complex processing algorithms. In this paper, a wireless system based on a commercial MEMS accelerometer is developed for rotating blade vibration monitoring. The proposed system measurement accuracy was assessed by means of comparison with a reference wired measurement setup based on a mini integrated circuit piezoelectric (ICP) accelerometer adapted for data acquisition in a rotating frame. Both the accelerometers were mounted on the tip of the blade and, in order to test the structure under different conditions, the first four blade resonances were excited by means of piezoelectric actuators, embedded in a novel experimental setup. The frequency and amplitude of acceleration, simultaneously measured by the reference and MEMS sensors, were compared with each other in order to investigate the viability and accuracy of the proposed wireless monitoring system. The rotor angular speed was varied from 0 to 300 rpm, and the data acquisitions were repeated six times for each considered condition. The outcomes reveal that the wireless measurement system may be successfully used for vibration monitoring in rotating blades.

As many studies show, there is a relation between the tissue’s mechanical characteristics and some specific diseases. Knowing this relationship would help early diagnosis or microsurgery. In this paper, a new method for measuring the viscoelastic properties of soft materials at the microscale is proposed. This approach is based on the adoption of a microsystem whose mechanical structure can be reduced to a compliant four bar linkage where the connecting rod is substituted by the tissue sample. A procedure to identify both stiffness and damping coefficients of the tissue is then applied to the developed hardware. Particularly, stiffness is calculated solving the static equations of the mechanism in a desired configuration, while the damping coefficient is inferred from the dynamic equations, which are written under the hypothesis that the sample tissue is excited by a variable compression force characterized by a suitable wave form. The whole procedure is implemented by making use of a control system.

Vibration damping is prominent in engineering; in fact, vibrations are related to many phenomena (e.g., the fatigue of structural elements). The advent of smart materials has significantly increased the number of available solutions in this field. Among smart materials, piezoelectric materials are most promising. However, their efficiency depends on their placement. There are many studies on their optimal placement for damping a particular mode, but few account for multimodal vibrations damping. In a previous work, an analytical method was proposed to find the optimal placement of piezoelectric plates to control the multimode vibrations of a cantilever beam. In this study, the efficiency of the above method has been improved, considering all plates active simultaneously, regardless of the eigenmodes that are excited, and changing, instead of the plates, the potential distribution. The method results indicate the optimal potential distribution for different excited eigenmodes. The results have been compared with those obtained by experimental tests and numerical simulations, exhibiting very good agreement.

Damping of vibrations is often required to improve both the performance and the integrity of engineering structures, for example, gas turbine blades. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using piezoelectric plates to control the multimode vibrations of a cantilever beam. To develop an effective control strategy and optimize the placement of the active piezoelectric elements in terms of vibrations amplitude reduction, a procedure has been developed and a new analytical solution has been proposed. The results obtained have been corroborated by comparison with the results from a multiphysics finite elements package (COMSOL), results available in the literature, and experimental investigations carried out by the authors.

The active vibration control systems have received considerable attention in various areas of mechanical engineering. The advent of smart materials has significantly increased the available solutions for engineers in this field. Among these, piezoelectric materials are among the most promising ones but their placement is an important parameter for their efficiency. The optimal placement to damp the flexural modes is a topic widely studied in the literature but this is not for the torsional modes. In this paper a new analytical method to find the optimal placement of piezoelectric plates to control the multimode torsional vibrations of a cantilever beam is proposed. The results are compared with those obtained by a finite element code with a very good agreement.