Development of an Innovative Torsional Vibration Damper with Magneto-Rheological Elastomers for Vehicle Driveline

The paper reports the stages of development of an innovative torsional vibration damper employing magnetorheological elastomers as spring elements. Such device could be adopted for reducing torsional vibrations of a vehicle powertrain. The device consists of two disks, a main flywheel and a damper disk, with interposed some spring elements, constituted by Magneto-Rheological Elastomeric (MRE) samples, working for transversal stress under relative angular displacements. The dynamical characteristics of the MRE samples can be properly tuned to mitigate the torsional vibrations which cause many undesired inconveniences as critical speeds or vibro-acoustic noise in gears. A numerical analysis, conducted on a simplified model of an automotive driveline, has been performed to evaluate the goodness of the device in reducing torsional resonances of the powertrain. An early experimental test rig to characterize the magnetorheological elastomer’s properties, is now under construction at the Dept. of Industrial Eng. of “Federico II” University. By a multibody code, developed in Adams® env., some simulations have been carried out with the aim to verify the behavior of the designed experimental test rig