The effect of interfacial bonding on the damping behavior of nanocomposites

Literature review The rapid and continuous growth in aerospace, automotive, and military applications requires special materials that have high performance characteristics to build structures that can achieve and exceed target properties. One of the important material characteristic needed for some of these applications is the ability to absorb vibrations, typically referred to as the damping capacity. Damping capacity is the dissipation of vibration by converting the mechanical energy introduced by vibration into heat. One of the materials that showed promise in this aspect is fibrous composites. The ability to tailor the interface strength between the fibers and matrix enhances the ability to design for a specific damping capacity. It was observed that a low interfacial shear strength between the fibers and the matrix and a high interfacial area, lead to an increase in damping capacity [1]. Such damping capacity can be further increased if discontinuous fibers were used rather than continuous fibers to reinforce the matrix [1, 2]. Following the same logic, nanocomposites with a nano-scale reinforcement and a larger interfacial contact area between the nanotubes and the surrounding material will be able to provide an increased damping capacity [3, 4].