The Examination of Electrorheological Properties of TiO2/Mineral Oil Suspensions Under Flow Mode

A claim has come up in the research of the mechatronical systems to develop special materials that can get information from a computer and change their attribution accordingly. From a control technology point of view using electric or magnetic field is the most obvious. One group of these materials is electrorheologic (ER) fluids that change their shear strength feature according to the electric field applied. Electrorheological (ER) fluids composed of TiO2 particles suspended in mineral oil (SN 150 A) are studied in this work. The rheological response has been characterized as a function of field strength, flow rate and volume fraction. The main goal of this work is to build up a test station for determining the effects and the relationships between the ER fluid parameters and the electric field applied. The unique ER valve construction and the test apparatus are shown and also the function tests of this unit have been carried out