A study on the damping characteristics of laminated composites with integral viscoelastic layers

The present paper is concerned with the utilization of the finite element based modal strain energy method for predicting the modal loss factor of laminated composite beams with integral viscoelastic layers. Both the frequency dependence of viscoelastic damping materials and the contribution of energy dissipation due to fiber-reinforced composites are taken into account. Commercial software ANSYS 7.0 has been used to develop a 3-D finite element model for this study. Comparisons of the numerical results by the present method with previous studies are made. The effects of damping of fiber-reinforced composite materials, ply angle of compliant layers, and location of viscoelastic layers on the loss factor and frequency of damped composite beams have also been studied.