Experimental Investigation of Damping Performance of Viscoelastic Material Using Constrained Layer Damping Treatment

The purpose of this paper is to determine the performance of damping provided by different viscoelastic materials (VEM). The damping performance of the viscoelastic material is investigated using constrained layer damping (CLD) treatment. Using the viscoelastic material as the core layer in the CLD structures, significant amount of damping can be obtained with minimum impact on the total mass of the structure. Viscoelastic polymeric materials have been used to damp vibrations for many years. Energy is dissipated through relaxation processes in the long chain molecular networks when a polymeric material is subjected to vibrations.In the current study, experimental investigation of the different viscoelastic materials is performed using Oberst beam test specimens and an impulse technique as per ASTM Standard E 756(05). The amount of damping of structure is measured by half- power bandwidth method.