EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) are increasing in popularity in many applications because of their ability to change stiffness by applying a magnetic field. In this report, thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) have been investigated as matrix material, instead of more often investigated liquid-based 1K and 2K elastomers. Here we show the thermoplastic processing of magnetorheological elastomer-based on carbonyl iron particles (CIP) embedded in a styrene-butadiene TPE matrix. We show that for filler content above 50 vol.-%, the linear relationship between powder content and the magnetorheological effect is no longer valid. Using TPE as a matrix material, we could achieve a static MR effect of 73% and a dynamic MR effect of 126%. The knowledge from TPE based magnetic composites will open up new opportunities for processing such as injection molding, extrusion, and fused deposition modeling (FDM). This work gives insights into the effect of CIP coating on the MR effect.