Study on the properties of porous magnetorheological elastomers under shock effect

Abstract

As a safe protector, buffer has been widely applied to engineering applications. The properties of cushion materials play a key role in the performance of the buffer under shock loading. Magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) are a kind of novel smart materials and show to have a controllable, field-dependent modulus, which have attracted increasing attentions and broad application prospects. This paper aims to fabricate a new kind of MRE, named as porous MRE, and study on the properties of porous MRE under shock effect in the presence of an external magnetic field. Three kinds of MRE samples based on polyurethane matrix were prepared without external magnetic field, and ammonium bicarbonate was used as foaming agent with content of 0 wt.%, 0.26 wt.%, 0.67 wt.%, respectively. The microstructures of the sample were observed by using a digital microscope, and image processing and analysis was applied to calculate the parameters of porous MRE. A sleeve structure and mass block were used to test the shock performance of porous MRE under shear mode, and an electromagnetic vibration and shock table was used to provide shock signal with half-sine shock signal. The results show that the content of foaming agent has an obvious influence on the microstructures of porous MRE. The porosity of the porous MRE samples increases with increasing of foaming agent content. Moreover, experimental results show that shock energy dissipation capacity is better than that of traditional MRE. This study is expected to provide guidance in the application of MRE in practical devices, such as in buffer devices.