Vibration Characteristics of Sandwich Beams with Steel Skins and Magnetorheological Elastomer Cores

Abstract

Magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) cored sandwich beams with steel skins offer potentially advantageous features when used in the context of structural dynamics. Modelling of the dynamic behaviour is undertaken in this investigation by adopting a higher order sandwich beam theory. Frequency responses from the theoretical modelling are compared with experimental results on MRE cored sandwich beams. The experimental responses are generated from a specially designed test rig to study dynamic behaviour, damping effects, localised magnetic field effects and energy dissipation with varying topology. A numerically based parametric study is conducted to find the optimum geometry for skins and core material to enhance damping performance. Under the same magnetic field strength, sandwich beams with thinner skins and thicker MRE core dissapate more vibration energy. Correlation between the experimental results and numerical studies has been found to be reasonably good.