Preparation and Experimental Study of Magnetorheological Fluids for Vibration Control

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids are a new kind of smart vibration mitigation material for vibration control, whose shear yield stress can change in magnetic field, and the change can occur only in a few milliseconds. The rheological properties, anti-settlement stability, and redispersibility are the very important properties of MR fluids. In this paper, a kind of preparation process of MR fluids is introduced and MR fluids with different grain diameter ratios of carbonyl iron particles are produced. Then, the properties of self-prepared MR fluids are tested, including the sedimentation stability test, viscosity test, and shear yield stress test. The results of the MR fluid property tests show that the adding of 10 mu m-carbonyl iron particles will improve the magnetic effect of MR fluids, increase the zero magnetic field viscosity of MR fluids, and increase shear yield stress of MR fluids in same magnetic field, but the anti- settlement properties will be degraded.