On the structural damping response of hollow carbon composite shafts with room temperature curable novel acrylic liquid thermoplastic resin

Abstract

Current research investigates the structural damping response of hollow tubular structures with novel acrylic liquid thermoplastic Elium® resin (EL) and thin ply carbon(TPC) and woven carbon(WC) as the reinforcement. The results are compared with the baseline tubes manufactured with conventional epoxy (EP) resin systems. The structural damping results have shown 26.7% higher structural damping for TPC/EL and 27.3% higher damping for WC/EL compared to TPC/EP and WC/EP tubular configuration respectively at all the accelerometer positions during the modal analysis tests. The viscoelastic presence in acrylic Elium® and its amorphous chemical structure as opposed to the cross-linked state in epoxy resin and good fibre matrix interfacial bonding is the major contributing factor towards this increase. Damping results have also shown that the thickness of the tube has a positive effect of the structural damping (1.6 mm as opposed to 1.1 mm) and on the contrary, an increase in the fibre volume fraction (64% as opposed to 41%) has an adverse effect on the damping phenomenon, 10% higher and 85% lower respectively.