Transient behaviors of a compressed electrorheological (ER) fluid based on zeolite and silicone oil have been experimentally investigated. The ER fluid is purely compressed between two parallel plates. Compressive speed and voltage amplitude effects on the transient process and randomly applied on/off voltages have been studied. Through normalizing compressive stress of the ER fluid, the characteristic compressive strain and the response time constant corresponding to the rise of compressive stress have been fitted with exponential equations. Results show that the rising time of the transient compressive stress is greatly affected by the compressive speed and the compressive strain position applying voltages, while the amplitude of the applied voltage has little effect on the rising time. The obtained transient compressive strain for the compressive stress to rise to its stable value is much smaller than that working in the transient process of ER fluids under shearing. The decay time and decay strain of compressive stress are much less than for stress rising. The half decay compressive strain is as small as 0.0003 in the experiment. Results show that the response time of compressed ER fluids is quick enough for the usual working conditions of squeezing ER dampers.

The transient process of an electrorheological (ER) fluid based on zeolite and silicone oil sheared between two parallel plates to which a square-wave electric field is applied has been experimentally studied. The transient shear stress response to the strain or time is tested. The characteristic constants of time under different applied electric fields and shear rates have been determined. The response time is found to be proportional to shear rate with an exponent of about −0.75 in the tested shear rate range, which agrees with the theoretical predictions made by others. But it only shows a small dependence on the strength of the applied electric field. The results show that the transient process of ER fluids is related to the structure formation in the shearing. When the required shear strain is reached, the shear stress rises to a stable value under constant electric field. Although the electric field strength greatly affects the yield strength, it shows little effect on the stress response time. Also, experiments showed the electric field-induced shear stress decreased with an increase of shear rate.

This paper discusses the effect of the electric double layer on a very thin water lubricating film with and without consideration of the elastic deformation of the opposing surfaces. A modified Reynolds equation that considers the electric double layer is used in a numerical analysis. The effect of zeta potential on the film thickness and pressure is numerically calculated. For both hydrodynamic and elastohydrodynamic cases, the electric double layer significantly increases the lubricating film thickness. The pressure is also marginally increased, as illustrated in the hydrodynamic analysis. However, the effect on pressure is almost unnoticeable in the elastohydrodynamic analysis. Overall, the electric-double-layer effect is only significant for a water-film thickness of less than approximately 100 nanometers

Particulate volume effect on electrorheology of suspensions at three volume fractions based on zeolite and silicone oil with strong electrorheological (ER) effect was determined and discussed. Experiments showed that ER effect was very weak at a low particulate volume fraction, and increased quickly with the increase of the particulate volume fraction. Based on the conduction model, interaction force between particles, particle chains in unit area, saturation of local electric field between particles, and the many body effect, were employed to explain the volume effect. This investigation showed that the ER effect could be effectively improved by increasing the particulate volume fraction.

The atomic force microscope (AFM) has become a main instrument in observing nano/microtribological characteristics of sample surfaces. In this paper, we investigated the micro-scale adhesive contact between the AFM tip and the sample surface based on the Maugis-Dugdale contact model, and analyzed the energy conversion and dissipation process during the AFM scanning process. A dimensionless stick-slip number ŋ=8U1h/(kθR2s) was defined, which can serve as a characteristic index for the appearance of nano/microtribology stick-slip behavior. If the stick-slip number is less than one, i.e., ŋ<1; the AFM tip slides on the sample surface and no stick-slip behavior occurs in the AFM lateral force signal. When the stick-slip number equals one, i.e., 1; the tip jumps on the sample surface and the AFM lateral force signal begins to exhibit a stick-slip behavior but without energy dissipation. Only in the case of ŋ>1 does the stick-slip behavior appear in the AFM lateral force signal accompanied by an obvious energy dissipation. The defined stick-slip number demonstrates that the nano/microtribological stick-slip behavior is due to the adhesive hysteresis as well as the instability motion of the AFM tip during the scanning process. Finally, the influence on nano/microtribology stick-slip behavior of sample surface energy, surface topography, scanning velocity, spring constant of AFM cantilever probe, etc. are investigated theoretically and experimentally. Various experimental results of nano/microtribology stickslip behavior under AFM are successfully interpreted according to the stick-slip number.