The Use of Layered Composites for Passive Vibration Damping

Abstract

With the advent of increasingly severe vibration environments, comes the need for better vibration damping control and alternate vibration damping methods. As a response to this, these methods need to be able to be accurately predicted through the use of analytical and numerical models. In this paper, an analytical model is proposed to analyze and predict the passive damping macro-slip behavior of multiple debonded layered composites. The aim of the paper is to develop a multi-layered model that is accurate yet easy to be analyzed so that it can be used efficiently in the design of layered composite dry friction dampers. The proposed analytical model allows for calculating an equivalent viscous damping coefficient from the kinematic tracking of the layer interfaces where Coulombic damping occurs. The equivalent viscous damping coefficient can be used in conjunction with a bilinear material model to represent the multiple layered composite as an Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) for linearizing the non-linear interfacial contact. The validation of the method is demonstrated by comparing the analytical results obtained in this study with those from numerical results.