A systematic design of a magneto-rheological fluid embedded pneumatic vibration isolator (MrEPI) considering practical constraints and optimal performance is proposed. The design procedure basically consists of three steps, i.e.system level design, component level design and practical realization. The system level design involves synthesizing appropriate non-dimensional system parameters of pneumatic spring and MR damper elements based on parameter sensitivity analysis considering requirements for compact and efficient hardware utilization. The component level design involves optimal design of the MR valve by minimizing an objective function in terms of non-dimensional geometric, material and excitation parameters, and guaranteeing required performance in the worst cases. Then practical realization involves determining actual plant parameters from the non-dimensional analysis in system and component level designs with the considerations of practical requirements/constraints. To verify the effectiveness of this optimization procedure, the semi-active vibration control performance of the optimized MrEPI subject to harmonic disturbances is evaluated, which shows good isolation performance in all tested cases. This study actually provides a systematic method for the optimal analysis and design of all those nonlinear vibration isolators consisting of pneumatic spring and MR damper elements. This is achieved firstly by developing effective sensitivity analysis of dominant design parameters upon the adjustable stiffness and damping capacity irrespective of bulky or small system mass configuration and subsequently via a systematic realization design with the consideration of practical constraints in applications.
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