A new magnetorheological elastomer composite (MRE) was developed with a resistance which is strongly sensitive both to temperature and pressure. The electrical resistance of this MRE was investigated versus pressure and temperature. The resistance of the composite was recorded versus pressure for seven different values of the temperature. The mechanism of electrical conduction was modeled and assessed experimentally. An other type of composite, prepared with a softer elastomer, showed a giant magnetoresistance with a decrease by 3 orders of magnitudes for a field of only 100kA/m (1250Oe); It was shown that the magnetic pressure acted like mechanical pressure for field lower than 100 kA/m but beyond the magnetoresistance was saturating contrary to piezoresistance.

Magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) are smart materials made by aligning magnetic microparticles inside a liquid polymer. Once the polymer is cured, this anisotropic structure is kept, giving to the composite new properties such as a large change of electrical resistivity with applied pressure. In order to understand the conduction mechanism in such composite, the influence of pressure on the electrical resistivity of metal powders without polymer was first investigated. It was found that the initial resistivity of metal powder at zero pressure is about 10 8 Ω.cm for pure nickel powder and 10 6 Ω.cm for silver coated nickel particle. The piezoresistivity of the powders follows a power law with a coefficient close to (-1) at high compression, which allows to determine the thickness of the oxide layer. The change of resistance with pressure was found to be an order of magnitude larger for a MRE composite than for the same volume fraction of fillers dispersed randomly in the polymer. The filler particles have a high surface roughness, and when particles are brought into contact under pressure, the electric current takes place via microcontacts between asperities. The model of tunnel resistance developed in this study includes the roughness parameters and the thickness of the oxide layer found with the powder and introduces the thickness of the polymer layer as a new parameter. This model well reproduces experimental curves for piezoresistivity of composites informing on the thickness of the insulating polymer layer strongly adsorbed on the surface of particles.

Magnetorheological elastomers are smart materials made by aligning magnetic microparticles inside a liquid polymer before the curing process has started. Once cured, the composite presents new properties such as a large change of elasticity when applying a magnetic field. We analyze here another specific property of these materials which is the piezoresistivity. Two cases are studied: one where the particles inside the matrix are not in contact and the other where they are in contact. We show that in the first case we observe an exponential dependence of the resistivity versus pressure and in the second case a power law dependence. These behaviors are explained with the help of a conductivity model based on the dependence of the tunnel effect on the area of contact.

Over the last few years, polymer/clay nanocomposites have been an area of intensive research due to their capacity to improve the properties of the polymer resin. These nanocharged polymers exhibit a complex rheological behavior due to their dispersed structure in the matrix. Thus, to gain fundamental understanding of nanocomposite dispersion, characterization of their internal structure and their rheological behavior is crucial. Such understanding is also key to determine the manufacturing conditions to produce these nanomaterials by liquid composite molding (LCM) process. This paper investigates the mix of nanoclays particles in an unsaturated polyester resin using three different dispersion techniques: manual mixing, sonication, and high shear mixing (HSM). This paper shows that the mixing method has a significant effect on the sample morphology. Rheology, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) characterization techniques were used to analyze the blends morphology and evaluate the nanoclays stacks/polymer matrix interaction. Several phenomena, such as shear thinning and premature polymer gelification, were notably observed.