Effects of Silicone Oil Viscosity and Carbonyl Iron Particle Weight Fraction and Size on Yield Stress for Magnetorheological Grease Based on a New Preparation Technique

This paper investigated the effects of silicone oil viscosity (SOV) and carbonyl iron particle (CIP) weight fraction and size on dynamic yield stress for magnetorheological (MR) grease. The MR grease samples were prepared using orthogonal array L(9) on the basis of a new preparation technology. The shear rheological tests were undertaken using a rotational shear rheometer and yield stress was obtained based on the Bingham fluid model. It was found that CIP fractions ranging from 65 wt% to 75 wt% and SOV varying from 50 m(2)·s(−1) to 1000 m(2)·s(−1) significantly affect the magnetic field-dependent yield stress of MR grease, but the CIPs with sizes of 3.2–3.9 μm hardly had any influence based on the analysis of variance (ANOVA). In addition, the yield stress of MR grease mainly depended on the CIP fraction and SOV by comparing their percent contribution (PC). It was further confirmed that there were positive effects of CIP fraction and SOV on yield stress through response surface analysis (RSA). The results showed a high dynamic yield stress. It indicated that MR grease is an intelligent material candidate which can be applied to many different areas requiring high field-induced rheological capabilities without flow for suspension. Moreover, based upon the multivariate regression equation, a constitutive model was developed to express the function of the yield stress as the SOV and fraction of CIPs under the application of magnetic fields.