Shear thickening fluid–based energy-free damper: Design and dynamic characteristics

Shear thickening fluid exhibits a tremendous ability to dissipate energy under an un-expected attack by presenting an abrupt increase in viscosity. In this work, a novel prototype shear thickening fluid damper was fabricated and its dynamic characteristics were experimentally investigated. By varying the rheological properties of the shear thickening fluids, the final shear thickening fluid dampers with different mechanical characteristics were obtained. The mechanism was qualitatively analyzed, and it was observed that the output force of shear thickening fluid damper sharply increased as soon as an external stimulus was imposed. The maximum output force of this shear thickening fluid damper can reach to as high as 2.7 kN, which was several orders of magnitude higher than the conventional shear thickening fluid damper. The model composed of an equivalent linear stiffness term, and a power-law viscous damping term was proposed and it agreed well with the nonlinear performance of shear thickening fluid damper.