A System for Magnetic Characterization of Advanced Multifunctional Magnetoactive Soft and Hard Materials

在智能材料中，磁活性弹性体(MAE)是真正的多功能材料，因为它们可以半主动地改变其动态性能(刚度和阻尼)，并由于其固有的磁致伸缩效应而提供可控的驱动。这些特性与其灵活性、故障保护、快速响应(不到几毫秒)和低功耗要求等独特功能相结合，使MAES成为开发下一代自适应结构的革命性智能材料，应用范围从空间结构和交通系统到民用基础设施、国防和医疗系统。MAES的场相关弹性模数和损耗模数使其成为开发高带宽自适应吸能器件的理想智能材料。这种新型智能设备可以集成在地面、航空航天和海洋车辆结构中，在不可预测的环境条件下实时有效地缓解传播的振动、结构噪声和冲击。最近发展起来的硬磁粉(H-MAES)，其中通常使用的软的微米级铁磁粒子被硬的永久磁性粒子所取代，显示出独特的性质。尽管目前对H-MRE的磁致伸缩特性的了解非常有限，但这些材料已经显示出通过反转磁场方向来降低模数和显著的磁致伸缩效应，这可能被用来开发新型的磁驱动人工肌肉和软致动器，用于生物医学、智能传感器的护理点诊断、机器人和微流体应用。该设备是一种独特的设备，能够有效和准确地表征各种磁活性材料(MAES、H-MAES、混合MAES、磁致伸缩和磁阻材料)的磁性能，这些材料对于以磁活性材料为特征的自适应结构和系统的精确建模和设计优化至关重要。为了了解磁活性自适应系统和结构的行为并更好地实现其潜在的应用，准确地预测其在大范围外部激励和运行因素下的动态特性是非常重要的。因此，准确地表征不同类型的磁活性材料在不同磁场强度下的磁性能对于更好地理解磁活性材料的磁性是至关重要的。所要求的设备具有其独特的特点，可以有效地对不同类型的磁活性材料进行多种测试，以绘制其在不同外加磁场下的磁性能图。这些信息对于开发高保真的基于物理的模型来预测磁活性材料的磁力学行为至关重要。

Among smart materials, magnetoactive elastomers (MAEs) are truly multifunctional materials as they can vary their dynamic properties (stiffness and damping) semi-actively as well as providing controlled actuation owing to their inherent magnetostriction effect. These properties, combined with their unique features such as flexibility, fail-safe, fast-response (less than few milliseconds) and low-power requirement, have made MAEs revolutionary smart materials for the development of next generation of adaptive structures for wide range of applications, ranging from space structures and transportation systems to civil infrastructure, defense and medical systems. Field-dependent elastic and loss moduli of MAEs have made them ideal smart materials for developing high-bandwidth adaptive energy absorption devices. Such novel smart devices can be integrated within the ground, aerospace and marine vehicle structures for effective mitigation of transmitted vibration, structure-born noise and shocks in real time under unpredictable environmental conditions. The recently developed Hard-MAEs (H-MAEs), where the typically-used soft micro-sized ferromagnetic particles in MAEs are replaced by hard permanent magnetic particles, have shown unique properties. Although the current knowledge on magnetostriction properties of H-MREs is very limited, these have shown reduced modulus by reversing the magnetic field direction and considerable magnetostriction effect that may be exploited for developing novel magnetically driven artificial muscles and soft actuators in biomedical, smart sensors for point-of-care diagnostics, robotics and microfluidic applications. The proposed equipment is a unique device which enable to efficiently and accurately characterize magnetic properties of various magnetoactive materials (MAEs, H-MAEs, Hybrid MAEs, magnetostrictive and magnetoresistive materials) which are of paramount importance for accurate modeling and design optimization of adaptive structures and systems featuring magnetoactive materials. In order to understand the behavior of magnetoactive-based adaptive systems and structures and also to better realize their potential applications, it is extremely important to accurately predict their dynamic characteristics under broad ranges of external excitations and operating factors. The accurate characterizations of magnetic properties of different types of magnetoactive materials under varying magnetic field intensities is thus of paramount importance to build a better understanding of the magnetic properties of magnetoactive materials. The requested equipment with its unique features can be effectively utilized to conduct versatile tests on different types of magnetoactive materials for mapping their magnetic properties under varied applied magnetic field. Such information is critical for developing high-fidelity physic-based models to predict magneto-mechanical behavior of magnetoactive materials.