Adaptive Semiactive Bumper for Aircraft

To avoid the limitation of traditional aircraft bumpers that their stiffness and damping factors are not adjustable,a new bumper was designed.It consists of a magnetorheological(MR) damper with variable damping factors and a magnetorheological elastomer(MRE) with variable rigidity,and the two parts are connected in parallel.The control models of the two parts were derived.An adaptive variable stiffness and damping control strategy based on the energy conservation principle was proposed.Simulation results showed that the bumper made the impact energy distribute more evenly,and reduced the peak impact load by about 17%.