Experimental investigation of the effect of ferromagnetic particles addition on mechanical properties of magneto-rheological materials

The ferromagnetic particle, are used in many areas due to their magnetic field sensitivity. Composite MRE materials which obtained from the combination of the matrix material with these particles are classified as a kind of smart materials. In this study, it is aimed that the compressive mechanical properties of MRE materials produced by adding four different magnetic particles in RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) silicone elastomer are investigated. As a matrix material Vario 40 silicone rubber were used, which is common in engineering application. The particle rate inside MRE materials was kept at 30% by volume. In addition, to investigate the influence of orientation of particles inside MRE materials, some samples were subjected to external magnetic field during production. These samples are named as anisotropic MRE materials while the others are described as isotropic ones. The tests showed that anisotropic samples have much more strength values according to isotropic samples. Of all, the MRE samples including BASF CN particles reveal the biggest strength values. Also, the samples were evaluated in terms of MR effect and the largest MR effect with an increase value of 201% was found for anisotropic samples including SQ-I particles with regard to the corresponding isotropic one. As a result, this study determined that the mechanical and MR properties of MRE materials seriously depend on ferromagnetic particle kind and its magnetic characteristic.