The evaluation of the effect of strain limits on the physical properties of Magnetorheological Elastomers subjected to uniaxial and biaxial cyclic testing

Magnetorheological Elastomers (MREs) are “smart” materials whose physical properties are altered by the application of magnetic fields. In a previous study by the authors, variations in the physical properties of MREs have been evaluated when subjected to a range of magnetic field strengths for both uniaxial and biaxial cyclic tests. By applying the same magnetic field to similar samples, this paper investigates the effect of both the upper strain limit and the strain amplitude on the properties of MREs subjected to cyclic fatigue testing. As the magnetorheological (MR) effect is due to the dipole-dipole interactions of the magnetic particles in an MRE, it is expected that the larger the upper strain limit, the lower the overall MR effect will be. This is investigated by varying the upper strain limit between tests while keeping the magnetic field applied during testing at selected cycles constant between tests. To investigate if the MR effect is only dependent on the upper strain limit and the magnitude of the applied magnetic field during cyclic testing, the tests are repeated with the same upper strain limits and applied fields but with reduced strain amplitude.