Behavior of magnetorheological elastomers with coated particles

Iron particle coating can improve the behavior of magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) by inhibiting iron particle rusting; however, such a process can change physical properties of MREs such as oxidation resistance, shear modulus, and stiffness change due to an applied magnetic field. In this study, MRE samples are fabricated with regular and polymerized iron particles. To investigate the possibility and extent of these changes, polymerized particle MRE samples are made using a combination of reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer and click chemistry. Shear test sample MREs with pure elastomer and 50 wt% MRE with and without polymerization are fabricated. To observe the effect of oxidation on shear properties of MREs, pure elastomer and 50 wt% coated and non-coated samples are oxidized using accelerated oxidation procedure. Experimental results show that oxidation significantly reduces the shear modulus of the elastomer matrix. The coating process of iron particles does not significantly change the shear modulus of resulting MREs but reduces the loss of shear modulus due to oxidation.