|
| Smart fluids |
| What do you get if you dissolve a giant magnet into some liquid sandpaper? Nobody knows, but you might get something like Magnetic Compound Fluid (MCF). MCF was invented at Akita Prefectural University in 2001, and it’s now the focus of a collaboration between Akita Prefectural University and the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. MCFs contain billions of magnetic and abrasive nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are quite small: one nanometre is one billionth of a metre; ten nanometres is still a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair. So what do you do with something so small? What will happen when you expose this fluid to a moving magnetic field? The magnetic particles in the fluid will race around under the influence of the magnetic field, and the abrasive particles are swept along for the ride. If you’ve ever been at the beach on a windy day, you’ll have an idea of what that might feel like. That’s why MCF is great for sanding things down, or polishing them up. ‘Using MCF presents a new way of polishing, without using conventional techniques’, explains Dr Yat Choy Wong of Swinburne. ‘For example, we polished steel surfaces in a vertical position, which is not that easy because of gravity’. Where conventional abrasive or slurry would just fall off, the MCF polish is magnetically retained, so you can polish in any direction. ‘We are also exploring new applications for this fluid’, says Yat Choy Wong. ‘MCF could be applied to improve or innovate technological applications that will benefit both countries’. Contact in Australia: Dr Yat Choy Wong, Swinburne University of Technology, VIC Email: Ywong@groupwise.swin.edu.au Website: http://www.swin.edu.au Ph: +61 3 9214 8735 Fax: +61 3 9214 8264 Contact in Japan: Dr Yongbo Wu Email: wuyb@akita-pu.ac.jp Website: http://www.akita-pu.ac.jp/e_guide/index.html Ph: +81-1-8427-2144 Fax: +81-1-8427-2188 Contact in Japan: Dr Kunio Shimada Email: shimada@ipc.fukushima-u.ac.jp Website: http://www.fukushima-u.ac.jp Ph: +81-2-4548-5214 Fax: +81-2-4548-5214 |
 |
|
|
|