A Hybrid Core Layer Design Concept for High Damping Carbon Fiber Reinforced Sandwich Structures

Abstract

To improve vibration damping performance of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRPs), a damping layer is typically sandwiched between two CFRP layers. Herein, a hybrid damping layer design is proposed, to obtain an optimum structure with high performance in both stiffness and damping. The sandwich structure is investigated for different materials of core layer, using different combinations of damping materials. A high-damping CFRP sandwich structure with a wide temperature range is proposed, which uses polyurethane and polyester in the hybrid core layer. The damping property and bending stiffness of the designed CFRP laminate is controllable by using either parallel mode or series mode with different ratios of the damping materials. The Ross-Kerwin-Ungar (RKU) equation is modified to predict the present hybrid core layer structures and reasonable results for both experimental and theoretical prediction were obtained.