Adaptable pneumatic shock absorber

Recent progress in the field of sensors, actuators, and smart materials allows the construction of more and more efficient controllable pneumatic dampers for shock absorption. Typically, such devices apply online semi-active control techniques, which utilize electromagnetic, piezoelectric, or magnetostrictive valves. As a result, they are characterized by a high efficiency of impact absorption, but simultaneously by a complicated construction and a specialized electronic system. The alternative solutions are semi-passive absorbers that ensure a similar performance by using a much simpler, low-cost construction and a less complicated adaptation mechanism. This paper introduces an adaptable semi-passive single-chamber pneumatic shock absorber, SOFT-DROP, which provides the optimal impact absorption and energy dissipation after a single reconfiguration performed at the beginning of the process. The high effectiveness of the proposed concept is proved in numerical and experimental investigations of the device. Moreover, the proposed semi-passive damper is also compared against already known pneumatic absorbers that utilize semi-active control methods. Ultimately, the device might be used in an airdrop system for delivery of light packages.