Investigation of steady state rheological properties and sedimentation of coated and pure carbonyl iron particles based magneto-rheological fluids

MR fluids face a major problem of sedimentation rate due to the high- density difference between the magnetic particles and the carrier medium that affects the performance of the magnetorheological devices. In this work, two MRF samples are prepared, where MRF-1 and MRF-2 are pure and coated carbonyl iron particles (CIPs) based MR fluids. The surface modification of the CIPs is performed using the solvent dispersion method to improve the sedimentation rate. The spherical shape and particle size analysis of the pure CIPs and coated CIPs’ morphology is investigated using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA) shows that the coated CIPs have high thermal stability and confirm that 6% by wt. coating is present in the coated sample. The chemical bonding of the coated CIPs is detected using the Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR). The saturation magnetization (Ms) of pure and coated CIPs is 245 emu/g and 120 emu/g, respectively, at 15 kOe, which is obtained by using a superconducting quantum interface device (SQUID). The rheology flow curve properties show that MRF-1 and MRF-2 exhibit yield stress of about 10 kpa and 9 kpa, respectively, for varying magnetic fields ranging from 0 to 343 kA/m. The Herschel-Bulkley model is fitted with the experimental data and the shear thinning behaviour is observed for both MR fluids. The sedimentation study shows that MRF-2 has better settling rate than MRF-1, which is observed by using the visual observation method up to 600 h.