THe Robot's blood

The Gen-next technology

The technology that joined hands with many fields of engineering such as civil, mechanical, electrical and electronics is popular known as the M R Technology. The M R Technology is completely based on the fluid prepared, to be used to minimize the dynamic forces of nature. Starting from the brakes in automobiles, to buildings subjected to wind and earthquake loads, all the structures however big or small it may be, use this latest technology. It is said that the fluid is used as blood in the next generation robots. That is why it is also called ‘Robot’s Blood’. But my concern is all about its use in the civil engineering structures, subjected to seismic loads. 

Disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, floods and other similar phenomena cause large-scale damage to lives and environment. The most remarkable challenge in civil engineering is to protect the structures from these hazards and a lot of research is being carried out world-wide in this field. The device to control the worst effects of earthquakes is known as MR Damper. The MR Damper can be of many types, but we are using the semi-active type of MR Damper. The reason is because it can operate under very low power requirement. Magneto rheological (MR) damper is one of the new technologies designed using MR fluids to produce controllable dampers to serve this purpose. Specially, MR fluid technologies are reliable, inexpensive, and relatively insensitive to temperature fluctuations. This type of damper has high dynamic range, low power requirements, large force capacity and robustness. In order to design the MR damper, a better understanding of MR fluid behavior is very important. The most important property of the MR Fluid is it viscosity. The determination of this property is the toughest part. After that, the fluid of a given viscosity is used in a damper for further testings.