Abstract
Electro-rheological(ER) fluid and valve are fabricated and evaluated experimentally in its durability to utilize the hydraulic control systems for long term operation. The two-ports ER valve used in the experiment consist of twelve parallel multi-layer electrodes and provide a restriction to the passage of ER fluid because of the viscous pressure drop and a component induced by the electric field. The durability test of ER valve are performed by measuring the surface roughness of electrodes with variation of an electric field strength and test time(1000 or 1800min.). Also, the shear stress and shear rate are measured to evaluate the durability of ER fluid as function of time. After durability test, ER shear stress increases approximately proportional to the shear rate with applied electric field intensity, In the ER valve, the center line average height roughness(Ra) of copper electrode increases about 1.56 times and ten-point median height roughness(Rz) increases about 2.2 times after the durability test. An understanding of these durability is essential to predicting the service life of ER fluid and valves.