Effect of internal pressure on flow properties of magnetorheological fluids

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids have a lot of applications in the industrial world, but sometimes their properties are not performing enough to meet system requirements. It has been found that in shear mode MR fluids exhibits a pressure dependency called squeeze strengthen effect. Since a lot of MR fluid based devices work in flow mode (i.e. dampers) this paper investigates the behaviour in flow mode under pressure. The system design is articulated in three steps: hydraulic system design, magnetic circuit design and design of experiment. The experimental apparatus is a cylinder in which a translating piston displaces the fluid without the use of standard gear pumps, incompatible with MR fluids. The experimental apparatus measures the MR fluid yield stress as a function of pressure and magnetic field allowing the yield shear stress to be calculated. A statistical analysis of the results shows that the squeeze strengthen effect is present in flow mode as well and the presence of internal pressure is able to enhance the performance of MR fluid by nearly ten times.