Abstract
In the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of smart materials or stimuli-responsive materials in high-tech industries and material science technologies. Current trends are working towards the development of materials that can be controlled and/or act in a predicted manner, undergoing significant macroscopic deformations when an external stimulus is applied (e.g., heat, electricity, light, pH value, moisture, and magnetism). Here an exotic carbon fiber-reinforced composite design is presented. This composite consists of a laminate integrated with alginate-based magnetic microspheres placed in strategic locations so that, upon exposure to a magnetic field the composite response can be finely controlled. Alginate is a biopolymer composed of two sugar residues. The formation of microspheres integrated with magnetite particles is created by fast crosslinking while the size of the microspheres is controlled with a fine-tuned fabrication process. The immobilized Fe3O4 particles are found to be extremely reactive when exposed to the field. The study analyzes the scenario in which such microspheres are surface mounted in the composite. It is shown that the obtained stimuli responsive composite allows for enhancing and largely tune the damping coefficient of the material.
