Experimental research and modeling of magnetorheological elastomers

In this paper, new methods for fabricating magnetorheological (MR) elastomers are introduced. Two different MR elastomers, one made of polyurethane and the other made of natural rubber, are successfully fabricated. The experimental results show that the modulus of polyurethane MR elastomers can increase by 28% under a strong magnetic field. Comparatively, the rubber MR elastomer has low modulus change ability. A mathematical model to represent the stress-strain relationship of MR elastomers is presented. The model takes into account all the dipole interactions in a chain and the nonlinear properties of the host composite. The analytical results of the model are in agreement with experimental data.