Study on Macroscopic and Microscopic Mechanical Behavior of Magnetorheological Elastomers by Representative Volume Element Approach

Shulei Sun,Zaoyang Guo,Xiongqi Peng

doi:10.1155/2014/232510

Abstract

By using a representative volume element (RVE) approach, this paper investigates the effective mechanical properties of anisotropic magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) in which particles are aligned and form chain-like structure under magnetic field during curing. Firstly, a three-dimensional RVE in zero magnetic field is presented in ABAQUS/Standard to calculate the macroscopic mechanical properties of MREs. It is shown that the initial shear modulus of MREs increases by 56% with a 20% volume fraction of particles compared to that of pure rubber. Then by introducing the Maxwell stress tensor, a two-dimensional plane stress RVE for the MRE is developed in COMSOL Multiphysics to study its response under a magnetic field. The influences of magnetic field intensity, radius of particles, and distance between two adjacent particles on the macroscopic mechanical properties of MRE are also investigated. The results show that the shear modulus increases with the increase of the applied magnetic field intensity and the radius of particles and the decrease of the distance between two adjacent particles in a chain. The predicted numerical results are consistent with theoretical results from Mori-Tanaka model, double inclusion model, and dipole model.

Highlights

Increasing interest in magnetorheological elastomers (MREs), in which micron sized ferrous particles are dispersed in soft matrix such as rubber, is driven by their unique property of magnetic-mechanical coupling [1,2,3,4]
By introducing the Maxwell stress tensor, a two-dimensional plane stress representative volume element (RVE) for the MRE is developed in COMSOL Multiphysics to study its response under a magnetic field
By using ABAQUS and COMSOL Multiphysics, magnetic-mechanical behaviors of MREs are investigated via FE simulations on RVEs with periodic boundary conditions being applied

Summary

Introduction

Increasing interest in magnetorheological elastomers (MREs), in which micron sized ferrous particles are dispersed in soft matrix such as rubber, is driven by their unique property of magnetic-mechanical coupling [1,2,3,4]. This kind of material renders changeable shear modulus with various applied magnetic field. Theoretical dipole model, which takes into account the magnetic dipole interaction between two adjacent particles in a chain, was widely used to study the mechanical properties of MREs [10,11,12,13]. Because of the complexity involved in magneticmechanical coupling, few studies on the macro-/microscopic mechanical properties of MREs were carried out based on finite element method (FEM)

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Results

Conclusion