Asymmetric hysteresis characteristics of magnetorheological elastomer embedding the tilt chain-like structure on the translational shear test: experiment and modeling

The magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) with tilt chain-like structure can significantly enhance the magnetorheological effect, but its hysteresis nonlinearity in the stress–strain responses is still unclear, especially the effect of the chain-like structure angle, which is essential for effective designs of controllable MRE-based devices. In this study, the hysteresis characteristics of the tilt chain-like structure MRE in the stress–strain curve of the translational shear test are investigated through the experiment and modeling. The experimental results of shear testing indicated that the stress–strain relationships of MRE with the tilt chain-like structure show an asymmetric hysteresis loop together with an obvious offset, which is different from the isotropic MRE and anisotropic MRE with the symmetric chain-like structure. In order to describe the asymmetric hysteresis loop in the translational shear characteristic, a stop operator-based modified Prandtl–Ishlinskii (PI) model is established considering a hyperbolic-tangent envelope function. The comparisons between model-predicted and measured data demonstrate that the established modified PI model can accurately describe the asymmetric hysteresis loops of MRE with different chain-like structure angles for wide ranges of excitation conditions and magnetic fields.