Performance evaluation of electrorheological fluid using acoustic method

This paper presents a simple method to evaluate the performance of electrorheological fluid (ERF) with acoustic parameters. The key parameters, such as the storage modulus and the loss modulus are obtained by ultrasonic shear wave reflectometry. By comparing and analyzing the value of the ratio of these two shear wave parameters, it could be easily and quickly to evaluate the performance of ERF. Four kinds of electrode surface morphology are chosen to vary the performance of ERF in this paper. The experimental results show that the optimum ERF system, for example the electrode surface morphology and DC electric field etc, are easily to be found by this method. Furthermore, the influence of leaky current is discussed also.