Magnetorheological dampers have been widely studied as versatile real-time actuators for solving vibration problems in various structures and systems. However, the inherent time delay problem of magnetorheological actuators may cause performance degradation of semi-active control systems. The primary purposes of this article are to provide a comprehensive analysis on the time delay of an impact buffer system based on a magnetorheological damper and to propose compensation methods to reduce the time delay. To this end, this study evaluated the electromagnetic circuit in the magnetorheological damper and designed an advanced correcting circuit to improve the response time. The simulation results show that the proposed circuit reduces the time delay by 5 ms. Using a magnetorheological buffer system setup, its force response times were tested. The experimental results show that the electromagnetic circuit plays a significant role in the time delay and it is highly dependent on the effectiveness of the electric parts of the control hardware. Furthermore, a proportional–integral–derivative controller is able to reduce the time delay and improve the dynamic performance of the magnetorheological impact buffer system.
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