Characterization of the linear viscoelastic region of magnetorheological elastomers

The linear viscoelastic behaviour of magnetorheological elastomers is analysed in this work according to their formulation and working conditions. This study comprised both the synthesis of different magnetorheological elastomers and the strain and frequency sweep characterization under different magnetic fields and temperatures. The characterization was performed by a Physica MCR 501 rheometer from Anton Paar, equipped with a magnetorheologic cell 70/1T MRD. In the synthesis with a given elastomeric matrix, samples with different magnetic particle content are studied with two types of curing conditions: under the action of a magnetic field (anisotropic magnetorheological elastomers) and without a magnetic field (isotropic magnetorheological elastomers). The working conditions are excitation frequency, temperature and the applied external magnetic field. In this work, a new procedure to determine the linear viscoelastic behaviour is proposed; the loss factor is analysed in addition to analysing the storage modulus to determine the linear viscoelastic region of each sample. The results show that high temperatures and magnetorheological elastomers with higher volume fraction of magnetic particles restrict the linear viscoelastic behaviour of magnetorheological elastomers.