RESOURCES

Abstract
Intelligent or smart materials have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as temperature, pH, electric or magnetic fields, etc. Magnetorheological (MR) materials are a class of smart materials whose properties can be varied by applying an external magnetic field. In this work, the possibility of employing a suitable 3D printing technology for the development of one of the smart MR materials, the magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) has been explored. In order to achieve such 3D printing, a multi-material printing is implemented, where a controlled volume of MR fluid is encapsulated within an elastomer matrix in the layer-by-layer fashion. The choice of printing materials determines the final structure of the 3D printed hybrid MR elastomer. Printing with a vulcanizing MR suspension produces the solid MR structure inside the elastomer matrix while printing with a non-vulcanizing MR suspension (MR fluid) results in the structures that the MR fluid is encapsulated inside the elastomer matrix. The 3D printability of different materials has been studied by measuring their rheological properties and we found that the highly shear thinning and thixotropic properties are important for 3D printability. The quality of the printed filaments strongly depends on the key printing parameters such as extrusion pressure, initial height and feed rate. The experimental results from the forced vibration testing show that the 3D printed MR elastomers could change their elastic and damping properties when exposed to the external magnetic field. Furthermore, the 3D printed MR elastomer also exhibits the anisotropic behavior when the direction of the magnetic field is changed with respect to the orientation of the printed filaments. This study has demonstrated that the 3D printing is viable for fabrication of hybrid MR elastomers with controlled structures of magnetic particles or MR fluids.

Abstract
Abstract In this study, a novel magnetorheological (MR) hybrid elastomer has been developed using a 3D printing method. In such an MR hybrid elastomer, a controlled volume of an MR fluid was encapsulated layer by layer into an elastomer matrix by means of a 3D printer and each layer was a composite structure consisting of an MR fluid and an elastomer. Similar to current MR fluids and MR elastomers, mechanical properties of 3D printed MR hybrid elastomers could be controlled via an externally applied magnetic field. The experimental results showed that the relative change in the damping capability of the new MR elastomer was more pronounced than the change in its stiffness when exposed to an external magnetic field. The study demonstrated that the 3D printing technique is feasible for fabrication of MR elastomers with controlled microstructures including magnetic particles or MR fluids. The 3D printed MR hybrid elastomer is also a potential material as a tunable spring-damper element.