'Good vibrations', the science and application of intrinsically damped composite materials

The work presented in this paper shows how the viscoelastic properties of an epoxy resin system can be modified to produce an intrinsically damped composite (IDC) material. Through the addition of chain extension modifiers, peak loss factors of up to 0.4 have been achieved compared to 0.005 for traditional glass reinforced epoxy (GRE) materials. Both dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and vibroacoustic measurement techniques were used to determine the loss factors of the IDC materials. The DMA technique was less sensitive to changes in damping due to different fibre orientations. In conclusion, potential areas of application for these novel composite materials are described. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.