Finite element studies on field-dependent rigidities of sandwich beams with magnetorheological elastomer cores

Sandwich beams with magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) cores exhibit field-dependent dynamic rigidities due to the field-dependent shear modulus of the MRE cores. Such structures have great potential as regards developing stiffness-controllable devices which respond to control signals within milliseconds. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of structural parameters on the field-dependent rigidities of single-layer sandwich beams with MRE cores through finite element analysis. Furthermore, a multilayer sandwich configuration is introduced to provide structures with higher bulk field-dependent rigidities. The structural design rules for multilayer sandwich beams for achieving the desired zero-field rigidities and desired relative change ranges of the field-dependent rigidities are presented. The results will provide basic guidelines for designing stiffness-controllable devices utilizing such MRE based sandwich structures