Thermal effects on the laminated magnetorheological elastomer isolator

Abstract

Rising internal temperature in the working process affects the stiffness and damping of the magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) isolator, which leads to decrease of stability. In this paper, temperature characteristics of a laminated MRE isolator are studied. Firstly, the structure of the MRE isolator is introduced and the dynamic mechanical properties of the MRE samples under various temperatures are tested. Secondly, a temperature experiment is carried out on the MRE isolator to explore the relationship of the resonant frequency, stiffness and damping with the temperature. The experimental results indicate that after working for 145 min with 3 A current, the internal average temperature of the MRE isolator tends to be stable and increases by 219.92% compared with not working. A sine sweeping-frequency experiment demonstrates that the maximum attenuation of the resonant frequency can reach 13.85% with the temperature increasing from 30 °C to 80 °C. Moreover, the maximum attenuations of the stiffness and the damping are 26.42% and 34.55% respectively. Finally, a method using silicon grease and air cooling is proposed to reduce the temperature by 41.6 °C in 145 min, which can effectively improve the stability of the MRE isolator.