Experimental and modeling study of viscoelastic behaviors of magneto-rheological shear thickening fluids

Nowadays, both Magneto-rheological Fluid (MRF) and Shear Thickening Fluid (STF) have separately attracted considerable interest due to the fast reversible response to either external magnetic field or abrupt shearing loading. In this paper, we fabricated a combined phase of Magneto-rheological Shear Thickening Fluid (MRSTF), where the 25 wt% STF is applied as medium phase with the addition of varied fractions of iron particle. The investigation of the dynamic behavior of this novel material under oscillatory shear was launched in a parallel-plate rheometer. The relevance of the dynamic behavior to strain amplitude, frequency and external magnetic field were investigated and discussed. A four-parameter viscoelastic model was applied to reconstruct the mechanical behavior of the MRSTF under different working conditions, and the parameters were identified within the Matlab optimization algorithm. The comparison between the experimental data and the model prediction results indicated that the four-parameter model could predict viscoelastic material with desired accuracy. The MRSTF exhibits features of both components, while prone more to MRF with the inception of external field excitations.