During past four decades, applications of magnetorheological and electrorheological fluids in adaptive sandwich structures have been widely studied, primarily for the purpose of vibration control. The rapid response time of controllable magnetorheological/electrorheological fluids to an applied magnetic/electric field and reversible variations in their stiffness and damping properties have been the key motivations for adaptive structures applications. This article presents a comprehensive review of the reported studies on applications of magnetorheological/electrorheological fluids for realizing active and semi-active vibration suppression in sandwich structures. The review focuses on methods of characterizing the magnetorheological/electrorheological fluids in the pre-yield region, magnetic/electric field-dependent phenomenological models describing the storage and loss moduli of fluids, experimental and analytical methods developed for vibration analysis of sandwich structures with magnetorheological/electrorheological fluid treatments, analysis of structures with partial magnetorheological/electrorheological fluid treatments and optimal treatment locations, and developments in control strategies for vibration suppression of magnetorheological/electrorheological sandwich structures. The studies on dynamic responses of fully and partially treated magnetorheological/electrorheological-based sandwich beams, plates, shells, and panels are also discussed, including the mathematical modeling methods and associated assumptions, methods of solutions, and experimental methods.

This study is concerned with the characterization of two types of magnetorheological (MR) fluids (MR 122EG and MR 132DG) in the pre-yield region. A phenomenological model is proposed for characterizing the complex shear modulus of the MR fluids as a function of both the magnetic flux density and the excitation frequency using the experimental data acquired for both the fluids. The experiments were conducted with a sandwich beam structure with an aluminum face layer and MR fluid as the core layer. A nearly uniform magnetic field was applied across the sandwich beam using two ceramic permanent magnet bars. The frequency response characteristics of the sandwich cantilevered beam were subsequently measured under harmonic excitations swept in the 0 to 500 Hz frequency range considering different densities of the applied magnetic flux, ranging from 0 to 90 mT. Dynamic responses of the structure were also obtained through analysis of a finite element (FE) model developed using the classical plate theory. The frequency and field-dependent complex shear moduli of the two MR fluids were identified from both the experimental data and the FE model results. The validity of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by comparing the FE model results with the experimental data for a copper sandwich structure comprising the two MR fluids.

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This article presents an experimental and theoretical study of vibration analysis of a magneto-rheological fluid-based sandwich plate. Two sandwich plates consisting of polyethylene terephthalate face layers were fabricated with two different magneto-rheological fluids (MRF-132DG and MRF-122EG) as the core layer and silicon rubber spacer as the sealant. The dynamic responses of the cantilever sandwich plate were experimentally characterized. A finite element model based on the Classical Plate Theory was formulated to obtain governing equations of motion of the multi-layer magneto-rheological plate. The complex shear modulus of each magneto-rheological fluid in the pre-yield region was described by a phenomenological model as a function of the magnetic flux density and excitation frequency. The results clearly showed enhanced vibration suppression properties of the magneto-rheological sandwich plate over a broad frequency range through variations in both the stiffness and damping.