Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and

Structures
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What Makes a Good MR Fluid?

J. David Carlson
Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures 2002 13: 431
DOI: 10.1106/104538902028221

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 What Makes a Good MR Fluid?
J. DAVID CARLSON*
Lord Corporation, 110 Lord Drive, Cary, North Carolina 27511, USA

ABSTRACT: Experience in manufacturing magnetorheological (MR) fluids for commercial

application has shown that some of the greatest barriers to commercial success are not factors
or conditions normally considered in the laboratory. The present paper looks at conditions
found in MR fluid devices operating in real-world applications where shear rates may exceed
105 s
1 and devices are called upon to operate for very long periods of time. The problem of
In-Use-Thickening wherein a MR fluid subjected to long-term use progressively thickens
until it eventually becomes an unworkable paste is presented. The search for a solution to this
heretofore unrecognized problem delayed commercial introduction of the Lord truck seat
damper system for several years. Today, good fluids are able to operate for long periods with
minimum in-use-thickening.

INTRODUCTION Winslow would add ferrous naphthenate or ferrous

HE most common response to the question of what
T makes a good magnetorheological (MR) fluid is
likely to be high yield strength or non-settling.
However, those particular features are perhaps not the
most critical when it comes to ultimate success of a MR
fluid. The most challenging barriers to the successful
commercialization of MR fluids and devices have
actually been less academic concerns.
As anyone who has made MR fluids knows, it is not
hard to make a strong MR fluid. Over fifty years ago
both Rabinow and Winslow described basic MR fluid
formulations that were every bit as strong as fluids
today. A typical MR fluid used by Rabinow consisted of
9 parts by weight of carbonyl iron to one part of silicone
oil, petroleum oil or kerosene [1]. To this suspension he
would optionally add grease or other thixotropic
additive to improve settling stability. The strength of
Rabinows MR fluid can be estimated from the result of
a simple demonstration that he performed. As shown in
Figure 1, Rabinow was able to suspend the weight of a
young woman from a simple direct shear MR fluid
device. He described the device as having a total shear
area of 8 sq. in. and the weight of the woman as 117 lb.
For this demonstration to be successful it was thus
necessary for the MR fluid to have a yield strength of at
least 100 kPa.
MR fluids made by Winslow were likely to have been
equally as strong. A typical fluid described by Winslow
consisted of 10 parts by weight of carbonyl iron
suspended in mineral oil [2]. To this suspension
* E-mail: jdcarlson@lord.com
oleate as a dispersant and a metal soap such as lithium
stearate or sodium stearate as a thixotropic additive.
The formulations described by Rabinow and Winslow
are relatively easy to make. The yield strength of the
resulting MR fluids is entirely adequate for most
applications. Additionally, the stability of these suspen-
sions is remarkably good. It is certainly adequate for
most common types of MR fluid application. As early
as 1950 Rabinow pointed out that complete suspension
stability, i.e., no supernatant clear layer formation, was
not necessary for most MR fluid devices. MR fluid
dampers and rotary brakes are in general highly efficient
mixing devices. When the piston in a MR fluid damper
moves, the MR fluid jets through the orifices quite
rapidly causing it to swirl and eddy vigorously even for
low piston speed. Similarly, the shear motion that occurs
in a MR brake causes vigorous fluid motion. As long as
the MR fluid does not settle into a hard sediment,
normal motion of the device is generally sufficient to
cause sufficient flow to quickly remix any stratified MR
fluid back to a homogeneous state. For a small MR
fluid damper such as the Lord Motion Master RD-1005
[3], two or three strokes of a damper that has sat
motionless for several months are sufficient to return it
to a completely remixed condition.
Except for very special cases such as seismic dampers,
lack of complete suspension stability is not a necessity. It
is sufficient for most applications to have a MR fluid
that soft settles upon standing a clear layer may form
at the top of the fluid but the sediment remains soft and
easily remixed. Attempting to make these MR fluids
absolutely stable may actually compromise their perfor-
mance in a device. One of the areas where MR fluids
find their greatest application is in linear dampers that

JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT MATERIAL SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES, Vol. 13July/August 2002 431
1045-389X/02/7/8 04315 $10.00/0 DOI: 10.1106/104538902028221
2002 Sage Publications

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432
Figure 1. Rainbows magnetic fluid demo.
effect semi-active control. These include small MR fluid
dampers for controlling the motion of suspended seats
in heavy-duty trucks, larger MR fluid dampers for use
as primary suspension shock absorbers and struts in
passenger automobiles and special purpose MR fluid
dampers for use in prosthetic devices.
In all of these devices one of the most important fluid
properties is a low-off state viscosity. While in all of
these examples having a MR fluid with a high yield
strength in the on-state is important, it is equally
important that the fluid also have a very low off-state.
The very ability of an MR fluid device to be effective at
enabling a semi-active control strategy such as
sky-hook damping depends on being able to achieve
a sufficiently low off-state. Care must be taken in
choosing fluid stabilizing additives so that they do not
adversely affect the off-state viscosity.
Earthquake dampers and other some other special
applications in which the device will sit quiescent for
very long periods of time represent special cases where
fluid stability issues may have overriding importance.
Because of the transient nature of seismic events these
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J. D. CARLSON
dampers never see regular motion, which can be relied
on to keep the fluid mixed. This lack of motion also has
its benefits. Unlike dampers used in highly dynamic
environments, seismic dampers do not need to sustain
millions of cycles. The fact that durability and wear are
not issues gives the fluid designer greater latitude
to formulate a highly stable fluid. MR fluids for these
applications are typically formulated as shearing-
thinning thixotropic gels.
THE MR FLUID ENVIRONMENT OUTSIDE
THE LABORATORY
In exploring the question of what makes a good MR
fluid, it is instructive to consider the factors and
conditions seen by a MR fluid, not in the laboratory,
but in devices in actual service. Even under normal
device operation these conditions can be quite extreme.
The specific environment to which a MR fluid is exposed
inside a MR device is quite different from the regime
that is normally measured in the laboratory. Consider
the conditions found inside a MotionMasterTM; RD-
1005-3 damper manufactured by Lord Corporation for
use in heavy-duty truck and bus seating [35]. This
damper is designed to generate a nominal resistive force
of about 1200 N at an input current of 1 A. The shear
rate inside the MR fluid valve under normal operating
conditions when the speed across the damper is in
the range of 0.050.2 m/s is 14  104 s
1. Under
extreme conditions this damper may experience speeds
in excess of 1 m/s or shear rates greater than 2  105 s
1.
An automotive primary suspension MR fluid shock
absorber may experience shear rates that are even larger,
perhaps as much as 106 s
1. The peak mechanical power
dissipation in the RD-1005-3 damper is normally in
the range of 60240 W. Since the damper contains
about 70 cm3 of fluid this corresponds to about
0.93.4 W/cm3 of fluid in the damper. Under extreme
conditions the peak power dissipation may exceed
1200 W or 17 W/cm3.
Conditions in a rotary brake are, in general, not as
extreme until one gets to the power per unit volume
level. The RheoneticTM MRB-2107 brake is designed to
produce a maximum dissipative torque of about 6 Nm at
an input of 1 A [6]. Under normal operating speeds of
1001000 rpm this corresponds to shear rates of
103
104 s
1. Power dissipation ranges from 63 to
630 W. Since the fluid volume in the brake is only
5 cm3, this corresponds to 13130 W/cm3.
Before a MR fluid is placed into a device it must be
made. The manufacturing process for commercial MR
fluids is quite different from the mixing of MR fluids in
a laboratory. A MR fluid that is to be commercially
useful outside of the laboratory must be amenable to
volume production. As such, the process for making the
 What Makes a Good MR Fluid ?
fluid must be scalable well beyond a liter-sized batch by
many orders of magnitude. The process must also yield
a result that is repeatable and reproducible. Todays
highly competitive, global market, particularly any
market related to the automotive industry, demands
that MR fluids be made with a process that is QS-9000
compliant and certified [7,8].
The scale of fluid production necessary for even a
modest automotive application is large. A single MR
fluid device such as a damper on a single automotive
platform model can easily require a total fluid volume
production on the order of 105 L/year. Depending on
the iron particle loading, that amount corresponds to
24  105 kg/year or 12 tons of MR fluid/day. A 50
gallon (185 L) barrel of MR fluid weighs between 1/2
and 1 ton. Thus, one must be able to reliably and
reproducibly make several barrels of MR fluid per day
on a continuous basis to support even a single, modest
automotive application. Being able to cope with the
logistics of handling and mixing large quantities of
heavy, pyrophoric materials is an absolute necessity.
THE PROBLEM OF IN-USE-THICKENING
During the development and commercialization
phases of several recent MR fluid devices, problems
with the MR fluid were discovered that were not
apparent in the early research phases of these projects.
An example of one such problem is a phenomenon
called In-Use-Thickening or IUT. If an ordinary MR
fluid is subjected to high stress and high shear rate over
a long period of time, the fluid will thicken.
Superficially, this process appears much like the process
of churning cream to make butter. An originally low-
viscosity, i.e., low off-state, MR fluid progressively
becomes thicker and thicker until it eventually becomes
an unmanageable paste having the consistency of shoe
polish.
An example of the in-use-thickening or IUT
problem is illustrated in Figure 2. In this example,
the off-state force of an early version of the
MotionMasterTM RD-1005 truck seat damper is
shown over the course of a life-cycle test. The damper
was operated at 1 Hz with a 25.4 mm stroke in the
on-state with 1 A applied continuously such that the
damper force was approximately 1200 N. Under these
conditions, the RMS mechanical power dissipation was
approximately 68 W. Aluminum cooling fins were
fastened to the damper body to augment convection
cooling and keep the damper temperature from exceed-
ing 100 C. Periodically, the current applied to the
damper was removed and the off-state force was
measured. These periodic off-state forces over the
course of about 600,000 on-state cycles or about 167 h
of operation are plotted in Figure 2.
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433
Figure 2. Example of IUT problem in an early MR fluid formulation.
The IUT phenomenon appears as a progressive
increase in the off-state force. By the time the damper
had experienced 600,000 on-state cycles, the off-state
force has increased from 200 to 500 N. This factor of 2.5
increase in off-state force is sufficient to render the
damper unsuitable for implementing effective semi-
active vibration control. For such, a low off-state force
is just as important as a high on-state force. While this
fluid provided very good performance when the damper
was first tested, the fluid thickening that developed
eventually rendered the damper unacceptable.
The off-state force increase that is the hallmark of the
IUT problem is due to an increase in the off-state
viscosity of MR fluid subjected to long-term stress. The
cause of this viscosity increase is believed to be due to
spalling of the friable surface layer from the surface of
the carbonyl iron particles that typically comprise the
particle component of MR fluid. This surface layer
composed of iron oxides, carbides and nitrides is rather
brittle. When subjected to high inter-particle stresses,
this surface layer fractures and breaks into small pieces
that separate from the primary particle. These very
small nanometer-sized secondary particles have a
very large surface area to weight ratio. As such, even a
very small amount of these secondary particles is
capable of significantly affecting the rheology of the
overall MR fluid.
The increase in MR fluid viscosity that results from
the addition of a volume of nano-sized particulates that
may have spalled from the surface of the carbonyl iron
particles is illustrated in Figure 3. In this graph the
observed progressive off-state viscosity increase due to
IUT is compared to the viscosity increase caused by
replacing a small part of the carbonyl iron mass with
nano-sized ferrite particles. The 0.5 and 1% dashed lines
in this graph correspond to the increased viscosity that
results if that amount of the carbonyl iron is replaced by
nano-sized ferrite. Replacing 0.5% of the mass of
carbonyl iron with the same mass of nano-sized ferrite
particles results in almost a factor of two increase in MR
fluid of-state viscosity. Replacing 1% of the carbonyl
434
Figure 3. Viscosity increase due to simulated surface spalling
compared to observed IUT.
Figure 4. Progressive development of IUT resistant MR fluid
formulations.
iron mass with ferrite results in approximately a factor
of three increase in viscosity. Thus, even if only a small
portion of the carbonyl iron particles is shed as
secondary nano-sized debris, a very large increase in
off-state viscosity can occur.
IUT was not identified as a serious problem until
long-term life testing to qualify commercial MR fluid
truck seat dampers was well underway. Finding and
implementing a viable solution to the IUT problem
required the focused efforts of a six-person team
working over a period of about two years. The IUT
problem delayed commercial introduction of the
MotionMaster truck seat damper for over two years.
Figure 4 shows the progressive progress that was made
in dealing with the IUT problem. Starting with the
original MR fluid recipe, MR fluid formulations that
showed progressively less IUT were developed over the
course of several years intensive development effort.
Eventually, a fluid formulation that showed no sig-
nificant IUT after two million cycles was found. Over
two years of intensive fluid development were required
to progress from Curve 1 to Curve 4, a fluid that could
survive the minimum 2 million cycles required for a
commercial MR fluid seat damper. Today the in-use-
thickening problem has not only been identified but
has been solved. Good MR fluids show no measurable
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J. D. CARLSON
in-use-thickening after more than 10 million cycles in the
MotionMasterTM RD-10005 damper.
MR FLUID LIFE
Depending on the conditions of the specific applica-
tion, all MR fluids will eventually show some degree of
deterioration. Such deterioration is usually manifested
as a thickening of the fluid as described above although
problems may occur as well. Silicone oil based fluids, for
instance, are prone to cross-linking if exposed to high
temperatures for extended periods or to ionizing
radiation. The amount of deterioration generally
depends on the shear rate, temperature and duration.
A measure that is useful in predicting the expected life
of MR fluid is the lifetime dissipated energy or LDE
defined in Equation (1).
Z life
1
LDE P  dt 1
V 0
where P is the instantaneous mechanical power being
converted to heat in the MR device and V is the volume
of MR fluid in the device. Thus, LDE is simply the total
mechanical energy dissipated per unit volume of MR
fluid over the life of a device.
In the case of MR Fluid #4 in Figure 3 the damper
was operated at an amplitude of /
12.7 mm at 1 Hz
with 1 A applied to generate 1200 N for 2.5 million
cycles. The RMS power dissipation was 68 W and
the damper contained 70 cm3 of fluid. Thus, over the
course of approximately 29 days of continuous opera-
tion the fluid in this damper accumulated a LDE of
2.4  106 J/cm3. It is our experience that the best MR
fluids today can sustain approximately 107 J/cm3 before
they have thickened to the point where they are no
longer useful in a controllable MR fluid device.
CONCLUSION
The answer to the question What makes a good MR
fluid? is It depends. It depends on the type of device
in which the MR fluid is used, the conditions to which
the fluid is exposed and the duration of that exposure.
MR fluids that are considered good in one application
may fail miserably in another type of device. MR fluid
development is of course a balancing act that is highly
coupled with MR device design. In evaluating the
quality of an MR fluid it is important to consider the
actual conditions to which it will be exposed and not just
the rheological behavior measured under normal
laboratory conditions. MR fluid durability and life
have been found to be more significant barriers to
 What Makes a Good MR Fluid ?
commercial success than yield strength or stability.
Amenability of a particular MR fluid formulation to
being scaled to volume production must also be
considered. Challenges for future MR fluid development
are fluids that operate in the high shear regime of
104106 s
1 and fluids able to sustain high LDE greater
than 107 J/cm3.
REFERENCES
1. Magnetic Fluid Clutch, 1948. Technical News Bulletin, National
Bureau of Standards, 32/4:5460.
2. Winslow, W. 1959. Field Responsive Fluid Couplings. US Patent
No. 2,886,151.
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435
3. Motion Master Ride Management System 1998. Pub No. PB8008a,
Lord Corp., Cary 1998.
4. Carlson, J.D. and Chrzan, M.J. 1994. Magnetorheological Fluid
Dampers. US Patent No. 5,277,281.
5. Carlson, J.D., Clair, K.A.St., Chrzan, M.J. and Prindle, D.R. 1999.
Controllable Vibration Apparatus. US Patent No. 5,878,851.
6. Carlson, J.D., Catanzarite, D.M. and St. Clair, K.A. 1996.
Commercial Magneto-Rheological Fluid Devices, In: Bullough,
W.A. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th Int. Conf. on ER Fluids, MR
Fluids and Assoc. Tech., July 1995, pp. 2028. World Scientific,
Singapore.
7. International Automotive Sector Group, 1999.
http://www.qs-9000.org/.
8. Quality Systems Requirements QS-9000, 1998. AIAG-Automotive
Industry Action Group, Southfield, MI.
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