抄録
Electrorheological (ER) suspensions behave like a Bingham fluid having yield stress which can be rapidly changed in a reversible manner by applied electric fields. In a hydraulic circuit system utilizing ER fluids, the pressure and flow rate would be controlled by changing the applied electric fields to an ER valve consisting of only electrodes with no moving parts. In this research, the ER characteristics and microstructural flow patterns of narrow slit flow of an ER suspension have been investigated to clarify the effects of the slit sizes on the ER fluid flow characteristics. The slit channel consists of two glass electrodes to visualize the microstructural flow patterns of the ER fluid. It was found that as the gap decreases down to about 0.1mm the ER effect apparently becomes weak, and the measured ER characteristics have a close relation to the visualized flow patterns.
