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Smart materials; vibration; mechanical testing; nanocomposites.

The incorporation of nanoparticles of iron in a natural rubber matrix leads to flexible magnetorheological (MR) materials. Rod-shaped MR elastomers based on natural rubber and nanosized iron have been moulded both with and without the application of an external magnetic field during curing. These MR elastomer rods and filler material were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Magnetic properties were investigated by using vibrating sample magnetometry. Microactuation studies were carried ou t by employing a laser Doppler vibrometer. It is seen that microactuation of field cured samples have been enhanced by two times when compared with that of zero field cured samples. The effect of alignment of magnetic particles during field-assisted curing was also studied by using a dynamic mechanical analyzer. A plausible model is put forwarded to explain the observed enhancement of actuation for field cured samples.

M P Vasudevan^{1 2} P M Sudeep^{1 3} I A Al-Omari⁴ Philip Kurian⁵ P M Ajayan⁶ T N Narayanan³ M R Anantharaman¹

1. Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India
2. Department of Physics, Sree Sankara Vidya Peetom College, Valayanchirangara, Cochin 683556, India
3. TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, Hyderabad 500075, India
4. Department of Physics, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, P.O. Box 36, Code 123, Oman
5. Department of Polymer Science andRubber Technology, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India
6. Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA

Manuscript received

29 January 2014

Manuscript revised

11 August 2014