Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42417-019-00120-5

REVIEW PAPER

Vibration Controllability of Sandwich Structures with Smart Materials

of Electrorheological Fluids and Magnetorheological Materials:
A Review
Shreedhar Kolekar1,2 · Krishna Venkatesh3 · Jong‑Seok Oh4 · Seung‑Bok Choi5

Received: 1 December 2017 / Accepted: 18 December 2017 / Published online: 6 May 2019
© Krishtel eMaging Solutions Private Limited 2019

Abstract
Background  Vibration control is very significant issue in various engineering fields such as flexible structures, rotor systems,
cable and bridge, and vehicle suspension. So far, three different recipes to suppress or control unwanted vibrations are used:
passive, semi-active and active. As well known, the passive method has several limitations, such as the lack of real-time
avoidance of the time-varying resonances. On the one hand, active vibration control method is very effective, but it is not
attractive in terms of cost due to the use of several actuators and sensors. Therefore, recently semi-active vibration control
method is popularly used in many practical environments.
Purpose  This article reviews vibration control of flexible structures using the semi-active method associated with smart
materials of electrorheological fluids, magnetorheological fluids and magnetorheological elastomers. Modal characteristics
of beam, shell and plate incorporating the core (or layer) of smart materials are deeply investigated and discussed in terms
of field-dependent controllability.
Methods  The field-dependent natural frequency and damping property of the sandwich beam type, plate type and shell type
are experimentally identified. Subsequently, an appropriate control scheme based on the field-dependent modal properties
is formulated to avoid the resonance behavior. In addition, several sandwich beams which are partially filled and fully filled
with the magnetorheological fluid are investigated to understand the effectiveness of the modal property change.
Results  It has shown that both damping and stiffness properties of the sandwich structures can be effectively controlled by
several ways: the change of the field intensity, the location of cores zones, the partial and full treatment and boundary con-
ditions of the structures. In addition, it has identified that mode shapes of the sandwich plates featuring electrorheological
core can be partially and fully controlled by applying the input field to an appropriate zone.
Conclusion  Smart flexible structures associated with the field-responsive materials can be effectively used for vibration
control due to its controllability of the stiffness and damping as well. However, to successfully implement in real environ-
ment, a more sophisticated analytical model considering themicroscopic aspects of the particle motions needs to developed.
Moreover, the field-dependent bucking problem and acoustic characteristics of smart structures subjected to external dis-
turbances need to be explored.

Keywords  Sandwich structure · Smart material core · Electrorheological fluid · Magnetorheological fluid ·
Magnetorheological elastomers · Vibration control · Mode shape control

4
* Seung‑Bok Choi Division of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering,
shreedharkolekar@gmail.com Kongju National University, Cheonan‑si, Chungnam 31080,
South Korea
1
Mechanical Engineering Department, Jain University, 5
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inha University,
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
253, Yonghyun‑dong, Namgu, Incheon, South Korea
2
Mechanical Engineering Department, Satara College
of Engineering and Management, Limb, Satara,
Maharashtra 415015, India
3
Centre for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy,
Jyothy Institute of Technology, Tataguni Off Kanakapura
Road, Bangalore 560082, Karnataka, India

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Introduction
Vibration control plays a fundamental and significant role
in various engineering fields such as flexible structures,
rotor systems, cable and bridge, vehicle suspension sys-
tem, and so on. Nowadays, three different methods are
used to suppress or to control the unwanted vibrations
occurred in the system those are passive, semi-active, and
also active one. It is known that the passive method has
many limitations, for example, lack of real-time avoid-
ance and also the time-varying resonances. However,
while compared with active vibration, this method is
very effective one and it has the limitation such high cost
due because of several actuators and sensors are used in
the system, because of these limitations, recently, many
researchers are developing semi-active kind vibration
control method implementing in many practical applica-
tions. Prior to deeply investigating the semi-active method,
some vibration control works are reviewed. Yanik et al. [1]
developed a very simple method to determine the required
damping effect and also control parameters for an effec-
tive passive method for the structures on the basis of an
optimal control gain for the closed loop classical control
system and come to know that how the damping, stiffness
parameters could be altered. Routaray et al. [2] work on
eddy current damper system to control unwanted vibra-
tions of cantilevered-type structure using an electric field.
Beltran et al. [3] embraced active vibration absorption sys-
tem consist of linear-spring damper mechanical system
when it is subjected to frequency harmonic excitations and
come to know that the proposed scheme was exception-
ally useful to stifle the vibration and henceforth to accom-
plish desired position. Roy et al. [4] explored the dynamic
behaviour of a stepped 2-material composite beam while
working under its first natural frequency and frequency-
response amplitude. Huang et al. [5] explored the transient
vibrations occurred in viscoelastic beam whenever it is
subjected to two types actions such as alternating uniform
transverse magnetic field as well as an axial periodic force.
And come to know that transient amplitudes and vibra-
tion frequencies for the first mode is very significant
because of the various effects such as viscosity, an axial
load, and also magnetic flux intensity acts on the system.
Aravindhan and Gupta [6] works on how vibration can
be controlled for the rotors using MR fluid dampers when
working under transient operating conditions and con-
sidering a flexible symmetric type rotor is used with one
control disk. Software simulation results were carried out
using FEM approach for the various structures and come
to know that the vibration controllability of the rotor sys-
tem is possible using MR damper. Gupta et al. [7] also
worked on MRF-based finite squeeze film damper which
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Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
is integrated with rotor-bearing system and also developed
a very useful a mathematical model consists of film pres-
sure, stiffness, and also damping coefficients can be easily
obtained. Xu et al. [8] worked on dynamic characteristics
of semi-active vibration absorber (SAVA) using an opti-
mum variable step-size control strategy. Zhang et al. [9]
work on vibration control of the flexible structures using
Fourier response functions using an equivalent damping
ratios by considering for the both 1-DOF (degree-of-free-
dom) and 2-DOF systems.
Recently, the authors of this review paper work on vibra-
tion control of flexible sandwich structures consists of con-
trollable magnetorheological fluid (MRF) in an core layer
[10, 11]. It has been verified that the how the natural fre-
quency can be appropriately tuned using supply of proper
input current (or magnetic field) to MR fluid domain. In
this review article, the researches on the vibration control
or suppression of sandwich beams, where both the damping
treatment and stiffness change are controllable are deeply
investigated.
Specifically, these structures can be effectively used in
aerospace, automotive, and construction industrial filed. It
is well known that sandwich structures can provide several
benefits such as enhanced strength-to-weight ratio which is
of extremely important in aerospace application. Besides
several advantages such as strong resistance to buckling and
high adaptable property complicated structures. Especially,
when the sandwich structures have a certain viscoelastic
core, both the energy and vibration damping can be effec-
tively achieved. Due to many advantages from the sand-
wich construction, the analytic researches for the sandwich
structures were undertaken by numerous scholars for last
40 years. In general, the viscoelastic materials such as many
polymeric and glassy materials are frequently used as layers
to augment damping property of sandwich structures.
For successful configuration of sandwich structures
which have viscoelastic cores, three different methods are
normally used, as shown in Fig. 1. These methods include
full-damping treatment of unconstrained viscoelastic layers,
full-damping treatment of constrained viscoelastic layers,
and partial damping treatment of viscoelastic layers. It is
remarked here that the free layer damping (FLD) treatment
is a kind of the unconstrained viscoelastic layer bonded to
one or both sides of the original (or base) structure using
proper adhesives, as shown in Fig. 1a. It is well known that
the viscoelastic layer extends or compresses in planes paral-
lel to the original structure if the base structure bends. On
the other hand, the energy due to the hysteresis behaviour
of the sandwich structure is dissipated as a heat, and both
the thickness and weight of the layers determine the damp-
ing degree. The first work on the sandwich structure with
the viscoelastic layer was undertaken in Ref. [12], where
principal characteristics of the viscoelastic materials such
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 361
Fig. 1  Configurations of passive
treatment using viscoelastic
layers: a full treatment of
unconstrained layer, b full treat-
ment of constrained layer, and c
partial treatment of constrained
layer
as complex moduli were identified. In this work, it has been
also identified that the loss factor of the sandwich beam
increases as the thickness and storage modulus and loss
factor of the layer increase. As another damping treatment
approach, the constrained layer damping (CLD) shown in
Fig. 1b is frequently used utilizing extra upper layer. This
configuration is easily deformed in the bending direction due
to the shear deformation associated with the extra layer. It is
generally known that the CLD can provide better efficiency
than the free layer damping approach, since higher energy
can be dissipated due to the storage of higher strain energy
in the core layer. Especially, the symmetric design configura-
tion which has the same thickness of the original structure
and upper layer can provide the highest efficiency due to the
maximum occurrence of the shear strain in the core layer.
The CLD approach, of course, can be applicable to multiple
constrained layers to achieve very effective damping perfor-
mances under various environmental conditions in which the
operating temperature and exciting frequency are changed.
On the other hand, a partial damping treatment shown in
Fig. 1c is frequently used in which the weight of the sand-
wich structures is the most crucial factor. In the approach,
an optimization of the treatment location and selection of the
viscoelastic layer are significant to enhance high damping
effect (or loss factor) of sandwich structures.
So far, numerous different configurations of sandwich
structures associated with the viscoelastic damping layers
have been proposed. However, in those works, the damping
property is constant, since it has been determined from the
design step. In other words, the dissipation energy due to the
damping treatment layers or cores is fixed during operating
period of the sandwich structures. This property is the same
even if various composite materials such as graphite lami-
nates are used as base structures. Due to the lack of damp-
ing controllability, the passive damping treatment method
with the viscoelastic layers cannot provide the robustness
of the desired performances in the presence of unexpected
uncertainties and external disturbances which may contain
several frequency spectra, of which are the same as those
of the natural frequencies of the sandwich structures. This,
of course, results in the resonance problem. Recently, to
resolve this limitation, controllable damping treatments for
sandwich structures have been proposed using several smart
materials. The smart materials used frequently for vibra-
tion control of flexible structures include electrorheological
fluids (ERF), MRF, magnetorheological elastomers (MRE),
shape memory alloy, and piezoelectric materials. In general,
the smart material based structures are treated as distributed
actuators and sensors. For the vibration control action, the
responses from the sensors are fed back to an appropriate
control algorithm stored in the microprocessor to calculate
the input signals to be applied to the actuators. It is known
that one of the salient properties of flexible structures associ-
ated with smart materials is to have controllability of modal
characteristics of the structures and hence to have robustness
against external disturbances and damages. In other words,
desired modal characteristics such as natural frequency can
be achieved by applying an appropriate control input to the
smart material actuators in a semi-active or active control
environment. When smart materials are integrated with
the sandwich structures, they can be used as cores or lay-
ers. This is possible through both the surface bonding and
embedding with keeping the material properties of original
structural systems. In addition, various control strategies can
be applied to the sandwich structures to adaptively achieve
desirable structural performances in terms of natural fre-
quency and mode shape.
The main contribution of this review article is to intro-
duce controllable sandwich structures, whose damping and
stiffness can be tuned utilizing smart materials of ERF,
MRF, and MRE as cores or layers. The principal material
characteristics of these materials, several configurations
of sandwich structures, control methods of tuning both
damping and stiffness properties, and inherent benefits of
the sandwich structure featuring each different controllable
core are surveyed and deeply discussed. Especially, a general
review on the studies of sandwich structures based on each
smart material core is first discussed followed by the specific
review in terms of technical aspects associated with vibra-
tion control characteristics; control capability of the natural
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frequencies, and mode shapes. However, it is here remarked
that the dynamic modeling methods and control strategies
are not provided in this review article, since those methods
and strategies are similar to those frequently used for vibra-
tion control of flexible structures.
This review article is organized as follows. In “Configu-
rations of Sandwich Structures with Controllable Cores”,
schematic configurations of sandwich structures are briefly
introduced followed by sandwich structures using ERF core
in “Sandwich Structures Using ERF Core. The sandwich
structures incorporating MRF and MRE layers are discussed
in “Sandwich Structures Using MRF Core” and “Sandwich
Structures Using MRE Core”, respectively, followed by con-
cluding remarks which include some future research works
to be under taken for successful applications in practical
environment.
Configurations of Sandwich Structures
with Controllable Cores
Beam Type
As well known, beam structure is mostly utilized to resist
bending deformation as a principal element of horizontal
structure. The applications of beam structures have a wide
spectrum from large scales such as building or civil engi-
neering structural elements to small scales such as auto-
mobile frames or machine frames. It is here remarked that
the design approach of the beam structures is exactly the
same regardless of the scale difference. It is well known that
modal characteristics of sandwich beam structures such as
mode shape heavily depends on geometrical and material
properties such as beam length, core property, and stiffness
of the original structure. It should be noted here that the
sandwich beam structure can have a nonlinear behaviour
exhibiting dual resonance frequencies if the beam length
is too short. In an effective design of the sandwich beam
structure, principal design factors such as the thickness and
length should be determined through both the analytical and
empirical approaches considering desired modal properties
which depend on the ratio of the calculated natural frequen-
cies of the sandwich beams to the measured values [13]. The
research on the sandwich beams containing ERF as a core
layer was first undertaken in Refs. [14–16]. In these works,
it has been observed that modal characteristics of the sand-
wich beam with the ERF core can be tuned by adjusting the
magnitude of the electric field owing to the field-dependent
yield stress of ERF in the sense of the rheological behaviour.
In addition, it has been demonstrated that the target vibra-
tion can be effectively controlled by shifting the resonance
frequency due to the application of appropriate input voltage
to the ERF core. Therefore, the sandwich beam structures
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Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
integrated with ERF cores can provide capabilities of modal
tuning as well as vibration control in a passive manner with-
out the feedback control action.
Plate Type
There are two principal features to describe plate structure
as a structural element. There are related to the geometrical
configuration and applied loading. The former of the plate
represents a three-dimensional solid with a small thickness
compared with other geometrical dimensions, while the lat-
ter represents the loading direction of the plate in which the
effects of the loads are exerted to the normal direction to
the thickness. The definition of the plate has been made in
Ref. [17] in which the effect of the modal frequency change
to the modal strain energy has been investigated using the
finite-element method which is very effective for plate sand-
wich structures to achieve damping treatment. Later on, the
research on the nonsymmetrical composite plates possess-
ing the damping layers was studied in Ref. [17], where the
governing equations of motions and boundary conditions
were derived. On the other hand, the stability problem of
the rotating sandwich plates was investigated using both the
discrete layer annular-element-based finite-element method
and Hamilton’s principle [18]. The results presented in this
work accelerated on the stability research of the sandwich
plates associated with the constrained viscoelastic core layer.
The first report on the adaptive sandwich plate incorporat-
ing with controllable core was provided in Ref. [19]. In this
work, controllable ERF was used as a core layer of the plate
and hence vibration controllability and mode shape control-
lability as a function of the electric field intensity was dem-
onstrated in an empirical approach.
Shell Type
As known, the shell structure is featured by a thin thick-
ness while keeping the shape and supports the load without
any solid supporting structure. To keep the original shape,
both the strength and rigidity are very significant. Moreo-
ver, these severely affect the loading distribution, so that
every part of the shell structure supports only a small load
based on the given strength. Among many shell structures,
a cylindrical shell structure is dominant in practical appli-
cation since its simplicity for modeling and reliability for
various loading. A multilayered conical shell structure with
the viscoelastic layers was studied in Ref. [20] in which three
different boundary conditions were imposed to investigate
the effect of the shear parameters on the natural frequency
change and loss factor. A cylindrically curved shell with
the damping treatment was also proposed and investigated
in Ref. [21], where the frequency dependence of the stor-
age and loss moduli of the viscoelastic layer was identified.
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 363
Besides, several research works on the laminated composite
conical shells featured by the constrained viscoelastic layer
have been undertaken through the finite-element analysis
to resolve the dynamic problem based on the layerwise
displacement theory. However, so far, there is no research
report on the shell structures incorporating with controllable
ERF or MRF layer or core.
It is remarked here that controllable damping and stiff-
ness treatment of sandwich structures using smart materials
cores have the same or very similar to traditional ones in
terms of configuration. Figure 2 shows schematic configu-
rations of three different sandwich structures with smart
material cores. As clearly seen, due to the similar structural
Fig. 2  Configurations of sand-
wich structures: a beam, b plate,
and c shell
configurations to traditional ones, analytical models are
almost the same as the viscoelastic model. The analytical
model is formulated based on the solid-phase or fluid-phase
behaviour of the smart fluids. For example, the sandwich
structures associated with ERF or MRF layer or core can be
treated as a fluid-like behaviour without external stimuli, but
those are treated as a solid-like behaviour with the external
stimuli. In addition, many researchers used Maxwell model
and Kalvin–Voight model to represent the augmented damp-
ing cores or layers. The controllable parameter is determined
from experimental testing as a function which can provide
a relationship between external voltage or current and the
change of damping and stiffness properties of sandwich
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364
structures. It is noted that in this review article, modeling
methods of sandwich structures associated with smart mate-
rials are not discussed in detail, since these are very similar
to conventional models in terms of analyzed resultants such
as complex modulus of sandwich structures.
Sandwich Structures Using ERF Core
General Review
An electrorheological fluid (ERF) is a kind of special
suspension consisting of fine non-conducting particles
(5–50 μm) and carrier liquid which is electrically insulated.
It is known that the apparent viscosity of ERF can be adap-
tive tuned by applying the electrical filed and its tuning capa-
bility is reversible and the response time to the viscosity
change is very fast (known as a few milliseconds). The first
appearance of sandwich structures incorporating with ERF
was proposed by Gandhi et al. [23]. In this work, conven-
tional robot arm was retrofitted by ERF and investigated the
settling motion at the end of robot operation. It has been
shown that the settling time of the retrofitted arm to the zero
vibration is much faster than the conventional arm made of
composite materials. They also proposed several types of
sandwich beams in which ERF are used as core and experi-
mentally showed excellent controllability of modal charac-
teristics such as natural frequencies by applying the electric
filed to the fluid domain [24, 25]. In 1990, Choi proposed an
analytical model of ERF sandwich beam which was used as
an arm of a flexible manipulator and showed the effective-
ness of transient vibration control during the step motion
of the manipulator through both simulation and experi-
ment [22]. In addition, Choi et al. proposed several types
of ERF sandwich beams and showed some salient advan-
tages such as resonance avoidance in the presence of dif-
ferent frequency spectra of external disturbances (or excita-
tions) [23–27]. Vibration control of a sandwich beam locally
linked to the ground was experimentally undertaken in Ref.
[28]. It has been demonstrated that vibration characteristics
of the proposed sandwich beam can be tuned in terms of
the stiffness and damping due to the controllable ERF layer
which is physically modeled as a complex spring consisting
of the pure spring and damping dashpot. This controllable
feature is one of the salient properties of sandwich structures
associated with ERF core or layer which eventually can con-
trol unwanted vibrations by just changing the electric filed
intensity. In the synthesis of the controllable sandwich struc-
ture using smart fluids, the dynamic modeling approach is
very important to get desired vibration control performances
such as the resonance avoidance. Most of dynamic modeling
techniques proposed so far heavily depend on experimental
results, and hence, the accuracy of the dynamic model is
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Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
determined by geometry of the sandwich structures such as
uniformity of the layer or core and uninhibited strain. Of
course, the field-dependent material characteristics of the
core (ERF) significantly affect the dynamic properties of
the sandwich beam, and hence, accurate identification of
the rheological properties of ERF is also very important to
achieve high accuracy of the empirical model. The sandwich
beam with ERF core was tested in Ref. [29] and the field-
dependent complex moduli of ERF was identified from the
modal characteristics of the sandwich beam [30]. Based on
these research works, dynamic properties of the sandwich
beam with ERF layer were experimentally investigated in
Ref. [31].
As mentioned earlier, the final objective is to effectively
control unwanted vibrations by applying an appropriate input
voltage to ERF domain. Thus, the impending issue is how to
determine the input voltage which can bring the most effec-
tive vibration control performance. To resolve this problem,
several solutions have been proposed. Among those solu-
tions, the resonance avoidance method in frequency domain
is frequently used, since it is very effective and its logic is
simple. To implement this approach, an empirical model
for the sandwich beams with ERF core was developed at
various boundary conditions [31]. To experimentally imple-
ment the resonance avoidance, modal characteristics of the
sandwich beam such as natural frequency need to be identi-
fied in frequency domain as a function of the electric field.
Subsequently, a table set to determine an appropriate input
field is established at various exciting frequencies for the
minimization of the vibration magnitude in a wide frequency
range. To demonstrate the effectiveness, a random excita-
tion is imposed to the sandwich beam with ERF core and
the table set values of the input voltage are applied from
the computer. Consequently, the lowest vibration magnitude
can be achieved in the considered frequency range. On the
other hand, the sandwich type of brass tube filled with ERF
as the constrained damping treatment layer was adopted and
its modal parameters were investigated as a function of the
electric field [32]. It has been shown from experimental tests
that both the natural frequency and loss factor increase as
the electric field increases. In addition, it has been specifi-
cally found that modal transmissibility of the sandwich tube
increases as amount of ERF filled with the spaces of the
tubes increases.
Vibration problem of sandwich plates with ERF cores
was also investigated by Choi et al. [19]. They made ERF
sandwich plate and investigated the controllability of mode
shapes of the plate by applying the input field to the par-
tial region and total domain of the fluid. In this work, they
proved that each mode shape of the plate can be properly
adjusted by the field intensity and the choice of the field
domain. On the other hands, Choi et al. proposed ERF sand-
wich plate for the investigation on the sound transmission
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 365
and deflection with respect to the field intensity [33]. It has
been shown that the speaker sound levels sourced from
the outside of the closed cabin can be effectively tuned to
achieve the desired sound level inside of the cabin. A hybrid
sandwich beam consisting of ERF core and the piezoelectric
film layer on the surface of the aluminium sheet was also
introduced and its vibration controllability was shown by
activating both ERF core and the bonded the film [34]. In
sandwich plate, the dynamic stability was studied in Ref.
[35] by adopting the constraint layer as ERF core which is
loaded in axial direction. It has been shown that as expected,
the ERF core significantly affects to the dynamic stability
of the sandwich plate showing high damping performance.
In addition, the effectiveness of the thickness ratio of the
base plate to ERF core was investigated by adopting the
finite-element method and Hamilton’s principle [36]. In this
work, the sandwich plate was fabricated utilizing both the
constrained layer and ERF core with the orthotropic base
plate. It has been validated that the effect of the ERF core is
higher than the effect of the constrained layer. On the con-
trary to two-layer sandwich structures, a three-layer sand-
wich structure incorporating with ERF core was fabricated
and its impulse responses were experimentally identified
and advocated through the finite-element analysis [37]. In
this work, the ERF core was modeled as Bingham model
considering the sign of the shear rate. It has been found that
the settling time to the steady-state value becomes shorter
Fig. 3  Schematic diagram of
ERF sandwich beam
Table 1  Specifications of ERF Specimen ER concentra- ER volume
sandwich beam [24] tion (wt%) fraction (%)
A 55 52.3
B 55 45.3
C 45 52.3
and the natural frequencies become higher as the electric
filed increases. A rotating polar sandwich plate containing
layers of ERF was introduced and its free vibration char-
acteristics were evaluated using the finite-element analysis
[38]. In this work, ERF layers were assumed to have shear
complex moduli and modal parameters were identified as
Eigen values. It has been demonstrated through both experi-
ment and simulation that desired storage and loss moduli of
the rotating sandwich plate can be achieved by tuning the
input field. More recently, the research on the elastoacous-
tic response mitigation was undertaken using a rectangular
sandwich panel with ERF core layer [39]. In this work, it has
found that the vibroacoustic response can be successfully
suppressed by applying the input voltage determined form
the sliding mode controller, while no effectiveness has found
in the absence of the control voltage.
Specific Review
In this section, inherent characteristics of ERF sandwich
beam and plate are reviewed in detail by referring to appro-
priate references. Choi et al. [24] proposed three sandwich
beams by incorporating ERF core, as shown in Fig. 3. The
geometry of the sandwich beam and amount of ERF are
presented in Table 1. The dimensions given in this table
were appropriately determined to avoid the self-deflection
due to the gravity when it is fixed as a cantilever beam. As
L (mm) h1 (mm) h2 (mm) b (mm) br (mm)
200 0.5 2 20 4
200 0.5 2 20 6
200 0.5 2 20 4
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366 Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377

clearly seen from Fig. 3, the face material and rubber play
as the electrode and insulator, respectively. In addition, the
volume faction of ERF core can be adjusted by adjusting the
width of the silicone rubber. In this work, ERF was prepared
using chemical corn starch as conductive particles and sili-
cone oil as a carrier liquid. There principal ingredients of
ERF were chosen since its excellent field-dependent rheo-
logical characteristics and easiness of the preparation pro-
cedures such as mixing and sieving. It is observed from the
table that three specimens have different volume fractions
or different widths of the sandwich beam. Three specimens
were fixed on the exciting shaker fixing the cantilevered
beams and randomly excited using the white noises in the
frequency domain. Then, from the frequency-response
functions of the specimens, natural frequencies and damp-
ing ratios were quantitatively identified and compared. The
specimen A which contains the highest particle concentra-
tion and volume fraction of the ERF core exhibits the larg-
est increment of the natural frequencies; for example, the
natural frequency of the first mode is increased up to 34%
by applying the input field of 0.0 kV/mm to ERF domain.
On the other hand, the first mode natural frequency of the
specimens B and C increases up to 16% and 11%, respec-
tively, at the same field. This result directly indicates that
the specimen A has the widest frequency spectrum to be
controlled by the electric field. This a great advantage to
avoid the resonance phenomenon in the design of sandwich
structures and hence to achieve enhanced structural stability.
Fig. 4  Vibration control responses: a transient response and b fre-
Similarly, the specimen A provides the highest increment in quency response
storage modulus and damping ratio. In this work, the vari-
ation of the storage modulus and damping ratio is linear as
a function of the electric field. Therefore, this linearity can
bring the easiness of the input determination which can sup-
press or control unwanted vibrations due to the resonance
behaviour. Since it is hard to formulate a theoretical model
of the sandwich structure incorporating ERF core, a semi-
empirical model is frequently adopted for the prediction of
the field-dependent modal properties. In other words, the
field-dependent core model is experimentally determined
first followed by the conventional sandwich theory or plate
theory. On the basis of the semi-empirical model, vibration
control capability by the ERF core can be achieved in the
sense of the variation of the stiffness and damping properties
of the sandwich structures. It has been demonstrated that Fig. 5  Schematic diagram of ERF sandwich plate
both transient and forced vibrations are well suppressed by
activating proportional-derivative (PD) controller in which
an appropriate control input is determined and applied to the This directly indicates that the resonance due to external
ERF core domain. Figure 4 presents vibration control results disturbances can be adaptive avoided by applying an appro-
using PD controller in time and frequency domains. It is priate control gain (electric field).
clearly observed that the transient response converges to the On the other hand, Choi et al. [19] made ERF sandwich
zero in a fast time by applying control gain (electric field) plate and investigated controllability of modal proper-
and the first mode natural frequency and damping ratio of ties through both analysis and experiment. They made the
ERF sandwich beam are increased a lot by the control gain. sandwich plate divided into four sections with insulation,

13
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 367

as shown in Fig. 5. In this sandwich plate, ERF is filled be successfully accomplished by an appropriate controller
contained between two layers of aluminium and composite associated with ERF core. It is remarked that the mode shape
laminates. They derived the governing equation of the pro- controllability is a very crucial issue to design aerospace
posed sandwich plate based on the strain and kinetic ener- structures such as aircraft wings and rotor blades subjected
gies and expressed as a form of the finite-element model. to randomly distributed external disturbances in which sev-
In this work, two signals from the input and output port eral specific frequency spectra are contained as external dis-
which are measured from two proximitors are utilized to turbances, which result in structural instability due to the
achieve transfer functions in the interested frequency range resonance phenomenon.
of 0–100 Hz which includes the first-four modes of the pro-
posed sandwich plates. Table 2 presents the first-four meas-
ured natural frequencies in terms of both the electric field Sandwich Structures Using MRF Core
intensity and the energizing areas with the applied fields.
It has been clearly seen that as the field intensity and the General Review
applied area increase, the modal frequencies increase. For
instance, the measured fourth-mode natural frequency of Similar to ERF, MRF is also a kind of smart material,
48.67 Hz without the electric field increases to 75.71 Hz whose rheological characteristics can be tune by an exter-
by applying the field of 1.0 kV/mm to all sections. In this nal magnetic field intensity. One most popular MRF con-
work, they also investigated the possibility of mode shape sists of the iron particles and base oils such as silicone oil.
control of the sandwich plate featuring ERF core. Figure 6 Thus, the iron particles distributed randomly without any
presents the measured mode shapes by applying the input magnetic field can form the chain-like structures as fast as
voltage to the whole domain or partial domain associated the magnetic field is applied to MRF domain. This change
with ERF cores. The shaded zones (blue colour) indicate the is equivalent to the change from the liquid phase to the
areas energized with the field. It is clearly seen that the origi- solid phase. From mechanics point of view, Newtonian
nal mode shapes can be changed to various mode shapes by fluid at zero field is changed to Bingham fluid at non-zero
only changing the energizing zone. These results directly field. From the change, original rheological properties of
imply control capability of the sandwich plate with ERF MRF such as storage modulus are altered with respect to
core to achieve desired mode shapes. This, of course, can the field intensity. In other words, the apparent viscosity
of MRF is increased to the phase of viscoelastic solid by
imposing the magnetic field, and hence, the stiffness and
Table 2  Field-dependent modal frequencies of ERF sandwich plate
damping property can be changed as a function of the field
[19]
intensity. The inherent characteristics are very similar to
Field area Input field Mode (Hz) ERF, but several advantages over ERF have been dem-
(kV/mm)
(1, 1) (1, 2) (2, 1) (2, 2) onstrated from the properties of MRF. These include the
higher yield stress at the same power and higher robust-
None 0.0 11.12 12.55 37.67 48.67
ness against environment conditions such as temperature,
A1 only 0.6 11.39 14.48 42.58 56.33
humidity, and dust. Therefore, MRF applications for
0.8 11.42 18.01 43.58 59.33
vibration control have attracted many researchers since
1.0 11.54 19.16 43.94 65.41
2000 due to inherent characteristics such as fast time and
A1, A2 0.6 11.50 13.87 43.73 60.22
high field-dependent force. The potential applications of
0.8 11.60 17.96 44.48 60.55
MRF to vibration control areas include automotive shock
1.0 11.63 19.23 45.74 61.43
absorber, engine mount, seat damper, robot, and flexible
A1, A3 0.6 11.51 13.39 44.74 57.12
structures. More details about MRF characteristics are
0.8 11.58 14.13 46.81 62.59
addressed before presenting sandwich structures associ-
1.0 11.65 14.20 47.29 65.70
ated with MRF. As mentioned earlier, there are two basic
A1, A4 0.6 11.59 13.44 47.37 59.19
ingredients to make MRF: particles and liquids. Potential
0.8 11.70 17.33 46.08 62.05
candidate for the particles includes iron, iron nitride, car-
1.0 11.68 14.96 48.42 69.95
bonyl iron, low carbon steel, silicone steel, and cobalt. The
A1, A3, A4 0.6 11.67 14.01 46.02 61.09
typical size of these particles is 0.1–15 μm and there are
0.8 11.70 17.33 46.08 62.05
two different shapes: spherical and plate-like. The former
1.0 11.71 21.41 47.14 67.20
has the faster response time, but the latter is settled more
Area all 0.6 11.70 13.47 40.75 53.82
slowly. On the other hand, potential candidates for the
0.8 11.73 13.69 42.53 60.56
carrier liquid include silicone oil, polyalphaolefin (PAO),
1.0 11.82 19.07 44.61 75.71
mineral oil, polyphenylethers, and synthetic cycloparaffin.

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368
Fig. 6  Controlled mode shapes:
a mode (1, 1) and b mode (2, 1)
One significant requirement as a good candidate for the
carrier liquid is the mass density to minimize the sedimen-
tation of the particles due to the mismatch of the density.
To enhance the field-dependent properties, the particles
are frequently coated as carbon nanotube, graphene, poly-
aniline, zirconia, and polystyrene. In the coating process,
the thickness control of the coating material is crucial to
obtain enhanced performances of MRF. In addition, an
13
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
optimal circuit design is necessary to achieve high perfor-
mances of the field-dependent properties of MRF. Since
the properties of MRF are anisotropic, the direction of
the magnetic field is very important. This issue becomes
more important when MRFs are applied to dynamic sys-
tems and devices. The response time of MRF is also fast
like ERF, and it can be effectively applied to vibration
control of flexible structures such as sandwich structures
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 369
as a controllable damping treatment. For example, start
structures based on MRF were introduced in Ref. [40]
and its vibration control capability was experimentally
investigated.
Due to several salient properties of MRF, numerous
researches on the application of MRF have been undertaken
for the last two decades. Thanks to active researches on MRF
technology, some devices or systems such as automotive
shock absorber are commercially available in the market.
Besides, MRF applications include various types of dampers
for washing machine, brakes, clutches, polishing devices,
hydraulic valves, tactile devices, haptic system for robot sur-
gery, health fitness equipment, and smart sandwich struc-
tures [41]. As for the smart or adaptive or intelligent struc-
tures incorporating with MRF, there are many works which
have been done to effectively control or suppress unwanted
structural vibrations. The field-dependent rheological behav-
iour in the pre-yield zone was tested and applied to the anal-
ysis of smart beam structure featuring MRF core [42]. In this
work, the field-dependent dynamic properties were inves-
tigated and the stability of the circular plate has also been
demonstrated by adopting MRF as the constrained damping
treatment layer. A number of thin plates with the slits were
attached to the linear damper system filled with MRF and the
bending moment of the wing was investigated by activating
the damper featuring MRF and plate slits [43]. In design of
structural system, the dynamic stability is very significant to
protect the failure due to unexpected disturbances. To vali-
date the effectiveness of MRF-based structures to guarantee
the dynamic stability, an orthotropic sandwich plate with
MRF cores was proposed and experimentally investigated
[44]. It has been shown in this work that the dynamic sta-
bility of the proposed flexible sandwich structures depends
on not only the magnetic field intensity, but also geometric
dimensions such as thickness ratio and stiffness ratio. In the
analysis of the structural stability and vibration control, the
location of MRF core and the number of MRF core are also
significantly considered. Recently, the sandwich beam pos-
sessing partially filled MRF was introduced and its vibra-
tion control characteristics were experimentally evaluated
[45]. As a first step, the field-dependent modal properties of
the proposed sandwich beam were identified and compared
Fig. 7  Test specimen of a
partially treated MRF sandwich
beam
with those the sandwich beam fully filled with MRF. After
finding more flexibility of the partially treated structure for
vibration control, the effects of MRF location on the mode
shapes and natural frequencies were investigated. Thus, it
has been shown that modal properties of the partially treated
with MRF depend on not only the field intensity, but also the
location and the length of MRF core. This kind of special
structure is very effective for the local change of the deflec-
tion pattern. Besides above, several works on the sandwich
beams with different MRFs have done as follows; silicon
oil-based MRF core [46], engine oil-based MRF core [47],
and lithium grease-based MRF core [48]. From these inves-
tigations, it has been understood that modal characteristics
of sandwich structures diversely and widely could be tuned
utilizing different carrier liquids as well as different addi-
tives of MRFs.
Specific Review
An experimental work was performed on a partially treated
MRF sandwich beam to examine its essential properties and
to investigate the validity of the proposed finite-element (FE)
model based on the Ritz method in Ref. [45]. In this work,
the partially treated MRF sandwich beam fabricated using
two thin aluminium strips (300 mm × 30 mm × 0.9 mm) with
zero magnetic permeability. The strips generated a uniform
1.15 mm gap for the MRF (MRF-122EG, Lord Cor., USA),
which was filled at the center of the middle layer of the
beam, as shown in Fig. 7. The forced vibration response with
higher magnetic inputs (400 and 500 G) could not be per-
formed owing to the very small clearance between the mag-
nets and beam. The frequency spectrum of the free vibration
response was measured and the natural frequencies under
two magnetic inputs were obtained using measured results
in frequency domain. Both the storage and shear moduli of
MRF were obtained and re-written as a second-order poly-
nomial function in accordance with the magnetic input.
It is generally known that a partially treated MRF sand-
wich beam is affected by magnetic input, thickness of fluid
layer, beam geometry, complex shear modulus of the MRF,
and boundary conditions. In addition, the dynamic proper-
ties of the MRF sandwich beam can be tuned by the size,
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370
number, and locations of the MRF segments in case of a  
partially treated structure. In this work, the natural frequen-
cies and loss factor with several magnetic inputs were inves-
tigated using the FE model and considering the effects of
the location and lengths of the MRF segment of the beam.
In addition, the effects of the locations and length of such
segments on the transverse vibration response were exam-
ined. In the pursuit of this purpose, four different shapes
of the localized MRF cores, as shown in Fig. 8, were ana-
lyzed together with different boundary conditions, namely,
simply supported boundary condition (SSB), clamped-free
boundary condition (CFB), and clamped–clamped bound-
ary condition (CCB). As shown in Fig. 8, the multi-layer
beam was equally divided into 24 segments. While the MRF
treatment was used to the selected segments or the pockets,
the remaining segments of the beam were considered to be
made out of aluminium material. During simulation process,
the total length of the all MRF layers was supposed to be
constant. In addition, the thickness of baseline of the elastic
and MRF layers was identically assumed to be 1 mm. By
comparing the natural frequency values according to three
modes, the effectiveness of the proposed FE formulations
for different configurations was confirmed. From Table 3, it
can be seen that that good agreement is observed between
measured natural frequencies and computed values via the
proposed FEM and Ritz formulations.
1. Effect of magnetic input
Fig. 8  Various configurations of partially treated MRF sandwich beam
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Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
The effect of magnetic input conditions on the par-
tially treated MRF sandwich beam was examined under
different boundary conditions. The FE results of natural
frequencies without magnetic input are listed in Table 4.
It can be seen that the natural frequencies of all modes
are proportional to the magnitude of magnetic input,
irrespective of the configuration. This is because the
bigger complex shear modulus of the MR fluid makes
an increment of the structure stiffness with high mag-
netic input condition. From Table 4, it is confirmed that
the capability of the MRF core to tune the vibration
response of the sandwich structure. The fundamental
mode of configuration D with CFB shows the relative
variations in mass and stiffness. From the ratio between
the square of the real and imaginary components of the
complex natural frequency, the loss factor was calcu-
lated. The relation between the magnetic input condi-
tions (0, 250, and 500 G) and the natural frequencies
of the several partially treated MRF sandwich beams
was examined. From Table 5, it was also verified that
the more the magnetic field intensity for all configura-
tions is large, the more the natural frequency increase, as
expected. The increment of the shear modulus of the MR
fluid, of course, results in the higher natural frequency
values. Accordingly, the field-dependent shear stresses
of the MRF itself are very important for the spectrum
variation of the natural frequencies. Meanwhile, the
damping properties of the sandwich beam with MRF
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 371

Table 3  Natural frequencies of Field intensity Mode Natural frequencies (Hz)

partially treated cantilever MRF (G)
sandwich beams [45] Measured FEM Ritz method
Result Percent devia- Results Percent
tion deviation

0 1 15 15.88 5.54 14.79 1.40

2 85 80.95 4.75 83.13 2.20
3 228 222.55 2.39 220.61 3.24
75 1 16 17.06 6.21 16.26 1.60
2 87 82.26 5.45 85.88 1.29
3 231 225.46 2.39 224.34 2.88
175 1 17 18.16 6.39 17.72 4.06
2 90 83.68 7.02 88.52 1.64
3 235 228.54 2.75 228.50 2.77
400 1 19 19.56 2.86 19.71 3.60
2 94 85.81 8.71 93.19 0.86
3 239 233.08 2.48 234.94 1.70
500 1 21 19.89 5.29 20.20 3.81
2 95 86.37 9.08 94.33 0.71
3 240 234.26 2.39 236.68 1.38

Table 4  Natural frequencies of partially treated MRF sandwich loss factor, while the CCB yields the smallest loss fac-
beams with simply supported condition at zero filed [45] tors under the same conditions. This is because CFE
Configuration Mode Natural frequencies (Hz) and CCB have the lowest and highest strain energies,
respectively. In addition, since the partially treated sand-
FEM Ritz method Percent
deviation wich beams have the smaller length of the MRF layer,
these beams have shown the relatively lower dissipated
A 1 28.30 29.04 2.55 energy and lower loss factor than the fully treated MRF
2 198.14 201.65 1.75 sandwich beam.
3 473.74 475.71 0.41
B 1 33.40 33.93 1.56
2 113.58 114.95 1.19 2. Influence of MRF location
3 484.07 486.35 0.47   From Tables 4, 5, and 6, it can be clearly known that
C 1 34.16 35.29 3.20 the position of the MRF segments on all configurations
2 126.21 125.29 0.73 is identically affected to both the loss factors and natu-
3 270.68 269.75 0.34 ral frequencies. In addition, the effect of the position of
D 1 50.10 49.94 0.32 the treatment was more examined using the configura-
2 163.94 164.70 0.46 tion A with SSB and CFE. The position of the partial
3 473.99 476.58 0.54 treatment was rearranged; the influence of four positions
of the MRF treatment was examined by analyzing the
first-four deflection modes with SSB. From the mode
cores can be tuned according to magnetic input condi- shape results, it can be inferred that the partial treatment
tions as well as the local position of the ERF domain. can tune the position of the peak normalized deflection
The loss factor which is merely the ratio between dis- and deflection mode. A fully treated structure consist-
sipated strain energy and the total energy was investi- ently revealed harmonic deflection patterns owing to its
gated. Table 6 shows the loss factors of the partially and symmetry. It is noted that the above tendency cannot be
fully treated sandwich beams subjected to the SSB. The detected in the structure with partially treatment owing
results generally present that the loss factor of the beam to the partial position of MRF segments. Although con-
and loss modulus of the MRF increase according to the figuration D yields relatively bigger loss factor at the
bigger magnetic input. In addition, the loss factors for fundamental mode, the modes 3 and 4 of configuration
other end conditions were identified. From these results, D showed the smallest deflection mode shape. This is
it was demonstrated that the CFB provides the biggest because the total energy governs the dissipated energy,

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372 Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377

Table 5  Influence of the Field intensity Configuration Mode number

magnetic field intensity on the (G)
natural frequencies of different 1 2 3 4 5
configurations of partially
treated simply supported MRF 0 A 28.30 198.14 473.74 694.21 1114.10
sandwich beams [45] B 33.40 113.58 484.07 742.85 1248.70
C 34.16 126.21 270.68 906.34 1170.50
D 50.10 163.94 473.99 605.89 965.40
250 A 29.86 206.33 479.52 700.13 1127.60
B 35.61 116.02 493.07 751.09 1252.10
C 36.63 129.05 273.94 915.50 1177.80
D 54.20 168.26 484.31 616.8 970.44
500 A 30.68 210.47 482.73 703.46 1135.30
B 36.77 117.38 498.14 755.59 1254.60
C 37.95 130.62 275.82 920.79 1182.00
D 56.37 170.64 490.24 623.16 973.41

Table 6  Influence of the End condition Field Configuration Mode number

magnetic field intensity on intensity
the loss factor of various (G) 1 2 3 4 5
configurations of MRF
sandwich beams at SSB end SSB 0 Fully treated beam 0.0999 0.0603 0.0384 0.0253 0.0176
condition [45]
Partially treated beam A 0.0190 0.0147 0.0041 0.0029 0.0039
B 0.0230 0.0072 0.0062 0.0038 0.0011
C 0.0249 0.0076 0.0039 0.0033 0.0021
D 0.0283 0.0089 0.0072 0.0059 0.0017
250 Fully treated beam 0.1077 0.0772 0.0559 0.0400 0.0292
Partially treated beam A 0.0292 0.0210 0.0070 0.0049 0.0071
B 0.0346 0.0122 0.0107 0.0063 0.0021
C 0.0380 0.0127 0.0071 0.0059 0.0036
D 0.0419 0.0153 0.0135 0.0114 0.0034
500 Fully treated beam 0.0941 0.0719 0.0545 0.0405 0.0304
Partially treated beam A 0.0291 0.0215 0.0073 0.0052 0.0077
B 0.0342 0.0128 0.0112 0.0065 0.0023
C 0.0377 0.0132 0.0076 0.0064 0.0039
D 0.0419 0.0153 0.0135 0.0114 0.0034

as shown in Table 4. Due to this, the configuration D did
not result in smaller natural frequency and deflection
mode shape at mode 1. On the contrary, Fig. 9 shows
the transverse displacement of treated MRF sandwich
beams 1–550 Hz. In addition, the position (from the left
end) and magnitude of the maximum displacement of
the structure were investigated under 500 G. Inciden-
tally, 30.23, 38.20, and 57.29 Hz were used to excite
the beam and the magnitude of those frequencies are
similar to that of first natural frequency of fully and
partially treated structures. Since the configuration A
has the lowest loss factor for the fundamental mode, the
maximum displacement of configuration A is the larg-
est magnitude than the other configurations for overall
excitation frequencies, as shown in Fig. 9 and Table 6.
It can be inferred that MRF layers can be used to effec-
tively reduce the unwanted vibrations of the sandwich
structure at any serious positions through various treat-
ment configurations.
It is noted that recently, more research works on the MRF
sandwich structures have been undertaken than the ERF
sandwich structures, since the MRF structure can provide
wider control range in terms of natural frequencies. In other
words, the natural frequency of flexible structures can be
tuned in a wider frequency range by apply the magnetic field
to the MRF domain of the structure. In addition, vibration
control performances of the flexible structures incorporat-
ing with the MRF are superior to those of the structures
with the ERF in terms of higher control force to control

13
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 373
Fig. 9  Transverse displacement
of fully and partially treated
MRF sandwich beam at a
magnetic field of 250 G under
simply supported end conditions
unwanted vibrations. This leads many research works on
the smart sandwich structures using MRF. One of the most
recent research works on MRF sandwich structures was
undertaken in Ref. [46]. In this work, a cylindrical sand-
wich panel with MRF layer was proposed and its vibration
characteristics such as natural frequencies, loss factors, and
buckling loads were investigated with respect to the mag-
netic field and MRF layer thickness. Other recent works on
MRF sandwich structures include optimal location of MRF
segment for superior vibration control, analysis of multi-
layer beam with the MRF, finite-element vibration analysis,
and investigations on dynamic properties of an axially mov-
ing MRF sandwich beam [47–52].
Sandwich Structures Using MRE Layer
General Review
Recently, to avoid some problems associated with ERF or
MRE for the synthesis of sandwich structures, so-called
MREs are introduced and actively researched. Since it is a
solid itself, whose stiffness and damping properties can be
controllable by external magnetic fields (current), the sedi-
mentation problem which is one of the crucial issues to
be resolved in ERF and MRF technology is not occurred.
Thus, MRE belongs to a new group of smart materials.
The field-dependent material characteristics between MRF
and MRE are very similar in the sense of the input field.
The fluid component of MRF is just replaced by the cross-
linked solid-like rubber materials. The micro-mechanism
of MRE can be represented in the shear motion by the
movement of the iron particles distributed in the matric
due to the magnetic field, and hence, the field-dependent
shear modulus is the most eminent property of MRE [53,
54]. The field-dependent shear modus, of course, depends
on several design parameters including particle concentra-
tion, base matrix, and curing methods. Many researches
on the sandwich structures of beam and plate which are
incorporated with MRE layers have been undertaken for
last 10 years. Most of these research works have focussed
on vibration reduction using the field-dependent shear
modulus of MRE resulting in the change of both the stiff-
ness and damping characteristics [55]. In recent years, a
theoretical model to control unwanted vibrations of the
sandwich beam associated with MRE layers was developed
and its effectiveness was validated through a comparative
work with the numerical results [56, 57]. Especially, they
validated the proposed model by comparing controllability
of the rheological characteristics of the sandwich beam
using a uniform magnetic field. When the sandwich struc-
tures featured by MRE layers are periodically loaded, the
stability is one of the crucial issues to be analyzed. This
problem can be resolved by adjusting the intensity of the
magnetic field to get sufficient stability zone under the
variation of the design parameters due to external load-
ing [58]. The adjustment of the magnetic field is closely
related to the shifting of the natural frequency to avoid
the resonance behaviour of the single and combined fre-
quencies under various boundary conditions. For success-
ful implementation of the above strategy, the frequency-
response function of the impending sandwich structure
needs to be identified and control algorithm should be
determined to minimize the zones of instabilities. Both
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374
one layer and multi-layers of MRE can be applied to sand-
wich structures to achieve diverse field-dependent modal
characteristics and hence maximize the vibration control
performances. The sandwich beam fabricated with the
three layers of MRE was proposed and its vibration control
capability was investigated in Refs. [59, 60]. In this work,
the loaded MRE layer associated with the ferromagnetic
particles, the unloaded MRE layer and the loaded layer
with iron particles have been used for the sandwich fabri-
cation, so that both the passive and active vibration control
capability can be evaluated at the same time. It is remarked
that in this work, the first three vibration modes only are
considered to investigate the parametric instability due to
two different particle-loading conditions. Recently, the
dynamic stability problem of the rotating sandwich beam
associated with MRE layers subjected to external periodic
loading in the axial direction was studied by adopting the
finite-element analysis. It has been found that the stability
of the rotating sandwich beam heavily depends on several
parameters including the field intensity, rotating speed,
and geometry of sandwich beam such as hub radius. It is
remarked that the instability zones of the sandwich beam
can be found using the harmonic balance approach, and
hence, the effect of each parameter to the instability can
be identified without any difficulty. On the other hand, the
instability problem of sandwich plate integrated with MRE
layers was also investigated using Galerkin’s approxima-
tion approach in Ref. [61] in which the boundary condi-
tions of simply supported were adopted for all sides and
the stochastic excitation loadings were applied to the sand-
wich plate. The field-dependent modal characteristics and
force distribution on the sandwich plate were evaluated
and compared with experimental results advocating the
approximation approach.
In fact, there are two types of fabrication for sandwich
structures using MRE layers; one is fully filled and the other
is partially filled to focus a certain area. Of course, each
method has several advantages over the other. For exam-
ple, the partially layered sandwich structures can minimize
unwanted vibrations of most critical zones with a small
amount of MRE layer. However, the sandwich structures
with fully filled MRE can provide much better vibration con-
trol performance in the case of many resonance frequencies.
The sandwich beam with partially filled MRE was investi-
gated and its control strategy was shown in very effective
manner in terms of the input power and local vibration per-
formance [62]. It is noted here that in this work, a rectangu-
lar control function under free vibrations was considered to
minimize unwanted vibrations. More recently, a new tapered
composite sandwich structure with partially filled MRE was
proposed and its field-dependent modal characteristics such
as loss factor were identified at different boundary condi-
tions [63]. In this work, it has been emphasized that an
13
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377
appropriate location of MRE layers is very important, and
hence, this needs to be realized from through experimental
investigation on the modal properties in the absence and
presence of the magnetic field.
Specific Review
Among many researches, the stress analysis of MRE sand-
wich structures with three layers is adopted as a specific
example to understand the field-dependent stress–strain rela-
tionship [64]. In this article, the relationship was formulated
on the basis of the linear viscoelastic theory. It has been
shown that both the storage modulus and loss modulus can
be tuned by the intensity of the magnetic field to be applied
to MRE domain. It is noted here that the storage modulus
directly indicates the stored energy during deformation
cycle, while the loss modulus indicates the energy dissipa-
tion during the same cycle motion. In this work, the geo-
metric dimensions of MRE sample was 20 mm × 1.15 mm
and its field-dependent rheological properties were obtained
using the parallel-plate rheometer. After fabricating the
sandwich beam with the above MRE layer, the field-depend-
ent modal characteristics were identified at constant angular
frequency as a function of the magnetic field intensity (or
current magnitude). Figure 10 presents a typical structure
configuration of the sandwich beam associated with MRE
layers. One advantage of using MRE over ERF and MRF is
to have many design degree-of-freedom to fabricate sand-
wich structures using many base structures, since MRE is a
solid structure. Therefore, any base material which is respon-
sive to the magnetic field can be utilized as a base structure.
For example, aluminium, graphite composite materials,
and other magnetic-sensitive materials can be easily adapt-
able to MRE layers. As for the application of the magnetic
field to the sandwich structure with MRE layer, there are
two approaches: one is to use the permanent magnet and
Fig. 10  Schematic diagram of MRE sandwich beam
Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2019) 7:359–377 375

the other is to use the magnetic coil circuit. The former is

very simple to establish an experimental setup, but it has
the size limitation in which the field intensity is not existed.
In this case, the change of the magnetic field intensity is
achieved by adjusting the distance between the permanent
magnets. On the other hand, the latter method is very effec-
tive to achieve uniform distribution of the magnetic field
through a whole of area by making appropriate magnetic
circuits around MRE layers, but its configuration is complex
and external power is required to operate the circuits. The
accurate adjusting of the applied magnetic field intensity, of
course, is achieved from the circuit design. After complet-
ing experimental apparatus, the fabricated sandwich beam
is fixed on the shaker system and physical signals such as
displacement and acceleration depending upon the exciting
frequency are measured. In Ref. [64], the displacement was
measured at the position of 20 mm from the free end of the
beam. Figure 11 shows the change of the first mode natural
frequency at various locations of the permanent magnets for
MRE layer (at various different magnetic field intensity).
It is clear observed that the natural frequency increases, as
the distance decreases which generates the increment of the
magnetic field intensity. The decrement trend of the natural
frequency is almost linear up to a certain distance. Figure 12
shows the frequency-response function obtained at the par-
ticular location of x = 23 cm from the free end of the beam.
Unlike the result shown in Fig. 11, the first natural frequency
at zero field is decreased by 11.5% with the magnetic field
of 95 mT at this location. Therefore, from the results shown
in Figs. 11 and 12, the resonance behaviour of the sandwich
structures due to external disturbance can be effectively
avoided by applying an appropriate magnetic field inten-
sity regardless of the structure location. Vibration control
of the sandwich structures with MRE layers, of course, can
Fig. 11  Measured natural frequency in different activated magnetic
field regions
Fig. 12  Field-dependent frequency responses of MRE sandwich beam
be implemented in a feedback method by identifying the
frequency spectrum of external disturbances and determin-
ing an optimal field intensity.
This kind of approach is especially effective for vibra-
tion control of the sandwich structures subjected to random
external disturbances having several frequency spectrum.
Concluding Remarks
This review article presented background and research
trend on sandwich structures, whose stiffness and damping
properties could be controllable utilizing smart materials as
cores or layers. Especially, research works on the sandwich
structures featuring ERF, MRF, and MREs were surveyed
in terms of structural configuration, modeling method, and
control strategy for the minimization of unwanted vibrations.
It has shown that both damping and stiffness properties of
the sandwich structures can be effectively controlled by
several ways: the change of the field intensity, the location
of cores zones, the partial and full treatment and bound-
ary conditions of the structures. In addition, it has found
that the modal parameters such as natural frequency of the
sandwich structures are controllable in real time by supply-
ing external input voltage or current. This yields one salient
benefit of the sandwich structures with controllable cores
or layers showing avoidance of the resonance phenomenon
which may be occurred from external disturbances, whose
frequency spectra contain one of the natural frequency of
the structures. Furthermore, the controllability of the mode
shapes of the sandwich plates can provide several advantages
in flexible structures systems such as aircraft wing, automo-
bile hood, and appendage of space robot. The advantages in
these applications include the avoidance of nonlinear flutter

13

376
behaviour, reduction of the resistance flow force, and nodal
point change of each mode.
Despite many research works and several advantages of
these smart sandwich structures, there is no specific practical
application in real environment so far. This directly indicates
that further research works should be explored more in the
future. The followings are essential research themes to be
undertaken for successful implementation in practical world.
(1) A more sophisticated analytical model for controllable
sandwich structures needs to be developed by consider-
ing the microscopic aspects of the particle motions of core
materials. This indicates the significance of the coupling
model between the microscopic motion of core materials
and macroscopic motion of base structures. (2) An electric
breakdown of ERF sandwich structures due to high voltage
should be perfectly avoided in practical application, since it
may cause the damage to other hardware such as the micro-
processor. Moreover, durability of the sandwich structures
needs to be further investigated, since most of particles of
ERF are very soft. (3) An optimal coil structure for MRF and
MRE sandwich structures needs to be developed to reduce
the response time to the input current and also to maximize
vibration reduction with relatively small input energy. In
addition, the simpler and more effective structural configura-
tion of sandwich structures should be developed for practical
usage. (4) A controllable range of the stiffness and damping
properties of the sandwich structures should be maximized
by considering both base structure such as graphite com-
posite laminate and core materials. This is crucial issue to
express a terminology of “smart” to the sandwich structures,
whose modal characteristics are controllable by external
stimuli in real time. (5) Several investigations on the buck-
ing problem as a function of controllable parameters, field-
dependent acoustic characteristics with controllable cores,
and robust controller to achieve desired performances in the
presence of uncertainties should be more explored for suc-
cessful application to real structural systems.
Compliance with ethical standards  flexible smart plate filled with electrorheological fluids. AIAA J
Conflict of interest  The authors declare that there is no conflict of in-
terest regarding the publication of this paper.
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