Investigation of the Elastic Modulus Effect on Free Vibration Characteristics of Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composite Beams Made of Various Fundamental Shapes

Abstract

Woven fiber reinforced polymer composites plays major role in structural applications. Structures subjected to dynamic situations, this leads to increased attention in finding characteristic behaviour/performance of FRP composites beams under vibrating conditions. The objective of this work is to understand and investigate the influence of cross sectional shapes of beams on successive vibration resonance frequencies and its damping performance under cantilever end conditions. The beams were fabricated by hand lay-up method in two different modulus material and cross sections like I and channel; maintaining uniform cross sectional area and moment of inertia apart from length of the beams using woven carbon fibre. The investigation was performed by impulse frequency response method using standard test procedure on low modulus Glass/epoxy composite beams and compared with high modulus Carbon/epoxy beams. Frequency response curve of I and channel shaped beams were compared for their damping performance. The modal frequencies of all fabricated beams were obtained using MEScopeVES® software and modal resonant frequencies, loss factor were compared against shapes.