Shear thickening fluids as a tunable damping element: experimental results and modeling

摘要

Highly concentrated silica suspensions are well-known for their pronounced shear-thickening behavior beyond a certain shear rate or stress, at which a significant and simultaneous increase of the stiffness and damping properties are observed. In the present work, the integration of shear-thickening fluids (STFs) into composite structures has been investigated with the aim of tuning part stiffness and damping capacity under dynamic deformation. Results from oscillatory rheological measurements on an STF were correlated with results from vibrating beam tests (VBT) on model sandwich structures containing layers of the same STF sandwiched between polyvinyl chloride (PVC) beams. The effect of STF composition was investigated, and finite element analysis (FEA) was used to predict the dynamic behavior of the PVC-STF sandwich structure numerically.