Investigation and modelling of damping mechanisms of magnetorheological elastomers

Damping in MREs is considered to be ascribed to viscous flow of the rubber matrix, interfacial damping at the interface between the magnetic particles and the matrix and magnetism induced damping. In this study, individual components in MREs that contribute to material damping were investigated. A model was developed to include viscous flow of the rubber matrix, interfacial damping and magnetism induced damping to give the total damping capacity of MREs psi(MRE)(psi(MRE)) It was found that psi(MRE) depends on frequency, iron sand content, strain amplitude and psi(MRE) is independent of the applied magnetic field over saturation magnetization. The proposed model was assessed experimentally using a series of isotropic and anisotropic MREs. Comparison between tan delta with psi(MRE) showed that psi(MRE) matched the experimental trends with average percentage difference of 8.1% and 21.8% for MREs with modified iron sand unmodified iron sand, respectively. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.