Experimental investigation of 3D-printed polymer-based MR sandwich beam under discretized magnetic field

Abstract

Smart materials are being employed in dynamic systems to tune the stiffness and damping of the structure by using external stimuli. Magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) are considered to be as one of the smart materials because of their characteristics of altering the dynamic properties under the external magnetic field. So far, MRE sandwich beams have been developed by embedding them between two parent structures. In the present work, a novel technique of embedding MR materials is presented to create complex sandwich structures. This technique will replace the conventional embedding technique which uses adhesives to bind the MR materials with the parent structure. The vibration characteristics of the developed sandwich beams are estimated by conducting harmonic analysis to a predefined band of frequency range under the different directions of magnetic field. Sinusoidal signals of desired frequency and amplitude were proffered using NI educational laboratory virtual instrumentation suite to an amplified piezoactuator for exciting the MR sandwich beam. A non-contact-type laser displacement sensor is used in this study to avoid the additional mass of the sensor on the beam. The results indicate that the smart materials can be efficiently embedded with the sandwich beam without using the adhesives. It is also found that by changing the direction of magnetic field, the range of the variation in stiffness of MR sandwich beam can be increased to enhance the isolation effect at fundamental natural frequency. © 2018, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.