Exploitation of compressive stress in electrorheological coupling

When subjected simultaneously to an electric field and compressive mechanical stress, electrorheological fluids exhibit degrees of liquid to solid state phase change far in excess of that obtainable from charged electrorheological fluids subjected only to shear stresses. The non-linear characteristics exhibited by this phenomenon give rise to new possibilities in clutch design where the exploitation of this binary effect may be used for mechanical torque transmission.