Investigation on the Effect of the Ferrous Particles Size on the Impact Absorption Capability of Magnetorheological Elastomer

This study presents the effect of ferrous particles size on impact absorption capability using magnetorheological elastomer (MRE). This study aims to determine the optimum parameter of ferrous particle size for MRE to obtain the maximum impact absorption capability performance. In order to develop MRE, the composition of MRE RTV silicon rubber, hardener, and CI particles with size of 20, 40, and 60 μm are investigated. In real-life applications, the optimum performance of MRE is influenced by the size of ferrous particles. Therefore, the preparation of MRE material is evaluated through experimentation to obtain optimum MRE composition parameters. In this study, three models of isotropic MRE were tested in off-state and on-state conditions with input current values of 0A, 0.5A, 1A, 1.5A, and 2A. The impact test machine was used to validate its performance in impact absorption capability. Validation of the performance is done by evaluating the response of the damping force of MRE material. As a result, this study proves that the size of Carbonyl Iron particles and the value of injected current can affect the response of damping force of MRE. Since the impact absorption capability of MRE can be determined by the response of damping force, the optimum size of CI particle to absorb the maximum impact is determined in this experiment. Therefore, the objective of this study is justified by finding the optimum CI particle size for best impact absorption capability, which is 60 μm in on-state condition with 2A input current.