Senior Design: Electromagnetic Bicycle Damper

Details

• Designed and validated an internal electromagnetic coil for an actively controlled magnetorheological (MR) fluid mountain bike damper, utilizing a 26-AWG copper coil and steel core operating at 10W and 2A to generate an estimated peak 0.15 Tesla magnetic field across a 2.5 mm radial gap
• Modeled magnetic field strength and spatial geometry using the Biot-Savart law and complete elliptic integrals in Python, ensuring field lines oriented perpendicularly to fluid flow to maximize yield stress activation up to 5.8 kPa
• Prototyped a dynamic C-based control system using an Arduino Nano R4 and dual BMI160 accelerometers to log and track sprung and unsprung fork kinematics, actively modulating coil current to optimize damping force during compression and mitigate continuous heat generation