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If magnetorheological (MR) fluids are stored in porous materials, when excited by the external magnetic field, MR fluid will be drawn out and produce MR effect, which could be used to solve the following problems of the MR damper, such as the seal, volume and the cost of MR fluid damper. In this paper, the effect of structure of metal foams on the performance of MR fluid is investigated; the relationship between the penetrability and the porosity of the metal foams is measured, the change of MR fluid performance flowing though the metal foams is obtained. It shows that, after flowing through metal foams, the change of performance of MR fluid is about 2.5%. Compared to the sponge, the porous metal foams have the obvious advantages in high porosity and rigidity, which provide a convenient and low-cost way to design the MR damper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The investigation of produced magnetorheological effect using porous materials (sponges, metal foams, etc.) to store MR fluids is a hot research topic, which can be used to solve the problem of dynamic seals and high cost for conventional MR fluid dampers. In this paper, the effect of the additional volume of MR fluid on the mechanical properties of metal foam MR materials is proposed. A set of plate-on-plate shearing test rigs is built up to evaluate experimentally the relationship between the mechanical properties (mainly shear torque) and the additional volume of this kind of metal foam MR materials in different currents and metal foams, which validates the effect of the MR fluid additional volume on the mechanical properties of metal foam MR materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]