As shown in Fig. 4, the damper is characterized by two main parts: a fixed component (or stator) and a rotary component (or rotor). Said components enclose a volume between them, that is filled by a MR fluid. Both the stator and the rotor have a pair of vanes, diametrically opposite, along their whole axial length, dividing the volume in four chambers. The chambers are so separated by four meatuses of fluid.
The novel conceptual idea is to make the stator coincide with the steering tube of the motorcycle and the rotor with the steering shaft. This solution achieves a full integration of the damper in the steering tube. Moreover, in this way the reduced space available in the radial direction is compensated by a relevant axial extent of the device, in order to generate adequate torque values.
Some electromagnets, or coils, are housed on the vanes of the stator and/or the rotor in order to generate a magnetic field across the meatuses. In this way the magnetic field direction is orthogonal to the liquid flow: this is the optimal condition to maximize the increase of the fluid viscosity and therefore minimize the intensity of the magnetic field required to achieve the scope.