Damping performance of cocured graphite/epoxy composite laminates with embedded damping materials

Cocuring viscoelastic damping materials in composites has been shown to be successful in greatly increasing the damping of composite structures. The damping performance, however, is often not as high in cocured composites as in secondarily bonded composites, where the damping material does not undergo the laminate cure cycle. The reason for the discrepancy in damping between the cocured and secondarily bonded samples was found to be resin penetration into the damping material. Samples with a barrier layer between the damping material and the epoxy resin had a 15.7% to 92.3% higher effective loss factor (depending on the frequency) than cocured FasTape(TM) 1125 samples without the barrier and at least 168% higher effective loss factor than cocured ISD 112 samples without the barrier. These higher damping values are very close to the values achieved by secondarily bonding. Viscoelastic damping materials typically have maximum recommended temperatures below that of the composite cure cycles. The effect of cure temperature on viscoelastic damping materials was also studied and it was determined that most damping materials are marginally affected by cure cycle temperature.