Study on the Magnetic Friction Characteristics of Magnetorheological Elastomers

In order to explore the tribological characteristics of magnetorheological elastomers(MREs), the isotropic and anisotropic MREs are fabricated, friction test bench is built and the friction experiment is carried out. The experiment results illustrate that the isotropic MRE has a decreasing in friction coefficient with increasing of the magnetic field, and change non-linearly with particle mass content. When the mass content reaches at 1:1.5, the friction coefficient change in maximum with 25% decrease. For the anisotropic MREs, the influence of magnetic on friction coefficient did not follow the same trend as isotropic MREs. The experiment results also show that friction coefficient of MREs decreased with the increase of load for both isotropic and anisotropic MREs when the deformation is with elastic range. Then the experimental phenomena is analyzed from the roughness of the material surface, the elastic modulus and the positive pressure angle. The relational model of the friction coefficient of MRE and the elastic modulus is built. And the sample of mass fraction of 1:3 is selected to verify that when the magnetic field strength is 500 m T, surface roughness of MREs is reduced by about 20.7%, and when the magnetic field strength is 250 m T, the elastic modulus is increased by about 22%, which is matched with the theoretical predictions.