Magneto-sensitive elastomers in vibration isolation

Sammanfattning: Vibration isolators made of rubber are used in numerous engineeringapplications to isolate structures from undesirable effects of vibrations.However, once a vibration isolator is installed in an application, it is not possible to modify its characteristics to adjust to changing conditions. An alternative to obtain more adaptive characteristics is touse magneto-sensitive (MS) elastomers. MS elastomers are a type of smart material consisting of an elastomer matrix, such as natural or synthetic rubber, to which iron particles are added displaying properties that vary rapidly, continuously and reversibly by applying an external magnetic field.The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibility to use MS natural rubber in vibration isolation.Firstly, dynamic shear properties of MS natural rubber are experimentally studied at various frequencies, dynamic amplitudes and magnetic fields. In addition, the influence on the dynamic properties of adding carbon black and plasticisers to MS rubber is investigated. Carbon black is the most popular reinforcing filler that rubber usually contains in engineering applications to improve mechanical properties where as plasticisers simplify the filler blending process.Furthermore, the effectiveness of MS rubber applied in a vibration isolation system is experimentally investigated by measuring the energy flow into the foundation. The energy flow, including both force and velocity of the foundation, is a suitable measure of the effectiveness of a real vibration isolation system where the foundation is not perfectly rigid. The vibration isolation system in this study consists of a solid aluminium mass excitedby an electro-dynamic shaker and mounted upon four nonlinear frequency,amplitude and magnetic field dependent MS isolators being connected to a relatively stiff foundation. The energy flow through the MS isolators is directly measured by inserting a force transducer below each isolator andan accelerometer on the foundation close to each isolator. MS isolators are shown to be more useful than conventional rubber isolators since the dynamic stiffness varies with the application of an external magnetic field,thus resulting in more effective vibration isolation. In addition, the indirect technique is employed to measure the energy flow while requiring only accelerometers since it is usually difficult to directly measure the force in a real application. The indirect technique is validated by direct measurements.Finally, a model of the energy flow through the nonlinear frequency,amplitude and magnetic field dependent MS isolators is developed for the tested vibration isolation system. Vibration isolators are usually only a small connecting component within a more complex system. Hence, simple discrete models are frequently used to characterise the frequency and dynamic amplitude dependence of rubber. Recently, a model of this type has been modified to include magneto-sensitivity and thus model MS rubber. In this study, this novel MS rubber model is incorporated into the full system to model the MS isolators while the foundation is characterised by its driving-point and transfer inertances at and between the connection points.The energy flow model results are compared to those of measurements,showing good agreement. The developed energy flow model provides a basis to design vibration isolator systems made of MS isolators.