Dynamic and vibration characteristics of visco-elastic materials

Recently, polymer materials have been used for a variety of purposes in mechanical engineering, electric engineering, material engineering, and military fields. Examples of these polymer materials include limiter materials used for crash protection in impact testers, shock absorbing materials for products subjected to impact and shock, airbag materials, and tire materials. In order to efficiently utilize these polymer materials in various applications, it is very important to understand the mechanical reaction and properties over a wide range of deformation and load rate. Thus, in this paper, the dynamic behavior of polymeric materials through modeling and analytical verification as well as experiments. For the purpose of these goals, dynamic properties and damping characteristics are first examined at room temperature through compression tests applying polymeric materials with various hardness. Secondly, the stiffness, the test elastic modulus, and the design elastic modulus for nonlinear models are determined. Finally, a dynamic stiffness model of the material is constructed, which is experimentally tested and analytically verified. The results from numerical analysis and experimental data meet in close agreement with each other, and therefore the validity of the numerical model has been confirmed. On the basis of the research on experiment and numerical analysis in this work, it is considered to design the products made up of rubber and polyurethane materials having hyper-viscoelastic property. © The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers