Response times of electrorheological fluids

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Abstract
Potential automotive applications of electrorheological (ER) fluids have stimulated renewed interest in their development. The inherent simplicity of a suspension of particles in a fluid that responds to an applied electric field with a two‐ or three‐order‐of‐magnitude increase in viscosity is clearly attractive. However, there are some important parameters that are not well delineated. Among them is the ER‐fluid response time, which needs to approach the millisecond range for effective device operation. We report results from recent measurements of response times for glass spheres suspended in silicone oil.