New Electrorheological Fluids — Characteristics and Implementation in Industrial and Mobile Applications

Various applications for controllable dampers in the industrial and automotive sector are demanding an improved electrorheological (ER)-fluid, concerning performance and long-term behavior. The newly developed ER-fluid RheOil ^® 3.0 presented here overcomes the main disadvantages like sedimentation and re-dispersing behavior. Besides this, better ER-performance (control ratio, current-density, step response time) could also be achieved. During tests of the response to changing temperature and long-term behavior, no significant degradation of the fluid or abrasive wear in the components was found over a wide temperature range.