ABSTRACT
Magnetorheological Elastomers (MREs) belong to a family of so-called smart materials which consist of micron sized magnetically permeable particles suspended in a non-magnetic medium (Boczkowska et al. 2007). Upon application of a magnetic field, the rheological properties of these materials are rapidly and reversibly altered (Lokander & Stenberg 2004). Various elastomers such as silicone rubber (Lockette et al. 2008, Farshad & Benine 2004), natural rubber (Chen et al. 2007) and polyurethane (Boczkowska et al. 2009) have been used as the rubber matrix to produce MREs with different properties. MREs can be fabricated either in the absence of, or in the presence of a magnetic field during the curing process. The former technique results in isotropic or homogenous MREs (Gong et al. 2005, Lokander & Stenberg 2003) while the latter results in anisotropic MREs with particles aligned into chain-like and columnar structures parallel to the direction of the applied field (Zhang et al. 2010).
