Long term stability of magnetorheological fluids using high viscosity linear polysiloxane carrier fluids

Abstract

Stability of magnetorheological fluids (MRFs) or suspensions has been a key issue in the development of various practical applications. In our prior work, it was experimentally confirmed that a high viscosity linear polysiloxane carrier fluid based MRF (hereinafter HVLP MRF) with 26% particle volume fraction (hereinafter 26 vol%) showed high sedimentation stability for 96 days because HVLP carrier fluids have remarkable shear thinning behavior, that is, very high viscosity at low shear rate but low viscosity at high shear rate. In addition, the effects of HVLP carrier fluid viscosity and carbonyl iron (CI) particle concentration on suspension stability were investigated with the objective of synthesizing highly stable HVLP MRFs for practical applications. The HVLP MRFs were synthesized by suspending nominally 32 vol% of CI particles in carrier fluids with different viscosities (i.e., 140, 440, and 800 Pa s). To illustrate the effect of particle concentration on suspension stability, because it is well known that suspension stability increases as particle concentration increases, two low concentrations, 5 and 10 vol%, and two high concentrations, 20 and 32 vol%, were prepared to demonstrate MRFs with relatively severe sedimentation, and stable suspensions, respectively. A vertical axis inductance monitoring system was employed to evaluate the suspension stability of the HVLP MRFs for 365 days by scanning the inductance of the MRF samples in a vertical fluid column, and logging this data with respect to height and time. In addition, the suspension stability of a commercially available MRF (i.e., Lord MRF-132DG) was also measured and compared with similar measurements for HVLP MRFs.