Experimental nonlinear vibrations of an MRE sandwich plate

The nonlinear vibration analysis of a magneto-rheological elastomer (MRE) sandwich plate is conducted experimentally. Experiments have been performed in order to construct the frequency-response curves in the vicinity of the fundamental natural frequency of an MRE sandwich plate (plate A) in either the absence or presence of a localised external magnetic field at 3 different geometrical locations, for both small and medium magnetic fields. Furthermore, experiments have also been conducted on a pure aluminium plate (plate B) with an equal thickness to the MRE sandwich plate (plate A) in order to examine the influence of the MRE layer on the nonlinear dynamics of the system. An electrodynamic shaker was used to directly force each system and the displacement at the centre of the plate was measured. Meanwhile, permanent magnets were used to apply a localised magnetic field for the experiments where the MRE sandwich plate was subject to an external magnetic field. It was observed all the MRE systems displayed strong hardening-type nonlinear behaviour, however, with increasing magnetic field this behaviour transitioned to a weak hardening-type nonlinearity.