Experimental study on the dynamic properties of magneto-rheological materials

Abstract

Magneto-rheological elastomer (MRE), is considered to be a smart material, which transFigure their rheological properties with the external applied magnetic field. Due to this novel property, MREs are extensively employed to control the vibration of a system at resonant frequency. Presently, MREs are integrated in a structure through a layer by layer technique and the bigger drawback of this technology is that, in the presence of high transverse shear stresses, de-lamination occurs which may result in failure of the system. To overcome the aforementioned problem, a novel method is proposed to merge the MREs with Fused Deposition Method (FDM). FDM is used to develop the primary structure with cavities using a FDM compatible material and MRE i.e. secondary material is filled in the cavities. It is postulated that the proposed methodology has the capability of reducing the possibility of de-lamination. Now, to investigate the dynamic performance of the developed structure, an experimental test setup was developed by fixing one end of the beam and supplying the desired magnetic field to the beam using an electromagnet. From the test results, It was concluded that, with the increase in the applied magnetic field, the isolation effect of the structure enhanced and it reduced with the shift of electromagnet from the free end to fixed end of the beam. Further, in the case of MRE, high magnetic field is required for achieving satisfactory performance, which results in increase of the electromagnet weight, in turn making the system bulkier. Therefore, the present work endeavours to replace the MRE with MR Fluid (MRF) in the same primary structure and perform a comparison study between MRE and MRF, for the same applied magnetic field. From the experimental results it was envisaged that the MRF depicted better isolation capability than MRE. � Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.