Confined compression behaviour of a shear thickening fluid with concentrated submicron particles

This study investigates the confined compression behaviour of a shear thickening fluid (STF) with concentrated submicron particles. The styrene/acrylate particles suspended in an ethylene glycol (EG) show a narrow size distribution, with a mean size of 0.4 mu m. The confined compression test results show the significant compressibility of the STF corresponding to the compression of the liquid medium EG and the compressibility of the STF starts to lessen when the applied compression stress is greater than 4 MPa. It is also found that the confined compression results of the STF are not sensitive to the loading rate ranging from 1 to 50 mm/min. Finally, the bulk moduli of the STF and the EG are obtained.