Vibration damping mechanism of CuAlMn/polymer/carbon nanomaterials multi-scale composites

A novel CuAlMn/polymer/carbon nanomaterials multi-scale composite with damping capability was successfully prepared. These composite materials composed of a CuAlMn memory alloy foam skeleton and a polymer matrix, which was in turn reinforced with different carbon nanomaterials. Experiment results show that the loss factor of CuAlMn/polymer/CNT composite is above 0.1, while the loss factor of CuAlMn/polymer/(Au@CNT + CNF + GNS) composite is higher than 0.12 over the entire temperature range, with the highest value reaching about 0.15. Also, it can be seen that the storage modulus of CuAlMn/polymer composite is above 3500 MPa, while CuAlMn/polymer/(Au@CNT + CNF + GNS) composite is about 1000 MPa. The loss factor for CuAlMn/polymer/(Au@CNT + CNF + GNS) composite is highest, and the storage modulus of it is lowest. A three-phase model was introduced to analyze the damping mechanism of the composite. The results indicate that the damping performance of the prepared composites is mainly affected by interfacial loss, which can be effectively improved by increasing the mismatch of elastic modulus near the interface and/or increasing the interfacial area. On these bases, the optimal performance of the composite material was predicted by calculation and simulation. This multi-scale composite offers a tremendously promising future, which needs further thorough exploration.