Mesoscopic magnetomechanical hysteresis in a magnetorheological elastomer.

Field-induced magnetostatic interaction in a pair of identical particles made of a magnetically soft ferromagnet is studied. It is shown that due to saturation of the ferromagnet magnetization, this case differs significantly from the (super)paramagnetic one. A numerical solution is given, discussed, and compared with that provided by a simpler model (nonlinear mutual dipoles). We show that for multidomain ferromagnetic particles embedded in an elastomer matrix, as for paramagnetic ones in the same environment, pair clusters may form or break by a hysteresis scenario. However, the magnetization saturation brings in important features to this effect. First, the bistability state and the hysteresis take place only in a limited region of the material parameters of the system. Second, along with the hysteresis jumps occurring under the sole influence of the field, the "latent" hysteresis is possible which realizes only if the action of the field is combined with some additional (nonmagnetic) external factor. The obtained conditions, when used to assess the possibility of clustering in real magnetorheological polymers, infer an important role of mesoscopic magnetomechanical hysteresis for the macroscopic properties of these composites.