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Soft elastic composite materials containing particulate rigid inclusions in asoft elastic matrix are candidates for developing soft actuators or tunabledamping devices. The possibility to reversibly drive the rigid inclusionswithin such a composite together to a close-to-touching state by an externalstimulus would offer important benefits. Then, a significant tuning of themechanical properties could be achieved due to the resulting mechanicalhardening. For a long time, it has been argued whether a virtual touching ofthe embedded magnetic particles with subsequent detachment can actually beobserved in real materials, and if so, whether the process is reversible. Here,we present experimental results that demonstrate this phenomenon in reality.Our system consists of two paramagnetic nickel particles embedded at finiteinitial distance in a soft elastic polymeric gel matrix. Magnetization in anexternal magnetic field tunes the magnetic attraction between the particles anddrives the process. We quantify the scenario by different theoretical tools,i.e., explicit analytical calculations in the framework of linear elasticitytheory, a projection onto simplified dipole-spring models, as well as detailedfinite-element simulations. From these different approaches, we conclude thatin our case the cycle of virtual touching and detachment shows hystereticbehavior due to the mutual magnetization between the paramagnetic particles.Our results are important for the design and construction of reversibly tunablemechanical damping devices. Moreover, our projection on dipole-spring modelsallows the formal connection of our description to various related systems,e.g., magnetosome filaments in magnetotactic bacteria.

Reversible magnetomechanical collapse: virtual touching and detachment of rigid inclusions in a soft elastic matrix