Magnetorheological behavior of thermoplastic elastomeric honeycomb structures fabricated by additive manufacturing

3D printing of magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) can potentially create versatile and complex mechanical structures with reversible stiffening properties. Several additive manufacturing (AM) methods, like direct printing and stereolithography (SLA), have been used to achieve magnetic thermoset and elastomer composite structures. For the first time, we demonstrate the use of MREs based on thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) in AM and we investigate their magnetorheological (MR) effect when used in lightweight honeycomb designs. Due to the low shore hardness of TPE, a screw extruder-based printing head is employed to print disk-shaped samples with honeycomb patterns at infill percentages varying from 15% to 50%. In order to compare the MR effect of disks with varying honeycomb infills through a compression method, we investigated the effect of different testing configurations. We observe that different permanent magnet configurations, as it has been used in literature so far, create an additional effect on the measured MR effect of the MRE samples. To eradicate this effect, a test setup with an unpaired permanent magnet configuration is proposed. MRE structures with an infill density of 20% showed, at 1% deformation range, the highest MR effect, almost four times as high as 100% infilled samples. MRE structures with an infill density between 30% and 50% showed a lower MR effect than at 20%, but were still higher than at 100%. We observe in simulations that the magnetic flux density of 100% infilled samples was higher at the edges of the samples and lower at the center. For samples with honeycomb infill, the magnetic flux density was higher at the outer rim of the samples and edges of the walls within the sample, which causes a higher MR effect. Our work demonstrates that the MR effect can be tuned by designing a MRE structure with a honeycomb infill. The honeycomb infill results in lightweight MREs with improved MR effect useful for various downstream applications that require reversible strong stiffening while remaining comparatively lightweight.

Automated summary

3D printing of magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) can create versatile and complex mechanical structures with reversible stiffening properties. The use of MREs based on thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) in 3D printing and their magnetorheological (MR) effect in lightweight honeycomb designs are demonstrated for the first time. The MR effect can be tuned by designing MRE structures with a honeycomb infill.