Using power-consuming materials for volume damping of thin-walled structural elements

Abstract

Using low-modulus foam materials of lower density leads to significantly higher protection of personnel (from noise and harmful vibrations) and structures (from corrosion), while only slightly increasing the weight of an object. But the main intended purpose of such a filler which is capable of actively absorbing the energy of vibrations caused by external dynamic forces is to reduce their number and amplitude. To achieve a similar effect, the building industry and aircraft construction have a long and successful history of utilizing three-layer plates and shells coated with a thin foam material. Theoretical studies, supported by experiments, make one come to the conclusion that volume damping of such elements has quite a low efficiency. The goal of the research was to preliminarily estimate how appropriate it is to use artificial low-modulus elastic materials to damp thin-walled elements of metal structures. It was achieved by running computational experiments in Solid Works software environment and plotting, on the basis of the experiments, vibrograms of damped vibrations of a cantilever beam. The results obtained during the testing showed that the volume damping using a foam material could be an efficient tool for damping free vibrations of a metal structure affected by bending.