Proceedings of International Conference on Aerospace Science and Technology 26-28 June 2008, Bangalore, India

INCAST 2008 - 026

DAMPING STUDY OF HYBRID NANO COMPOSITES BY LOW VELOCITY IMPACT
Composites Technology Centre, Department of Aerospace Engineering, I.I.T Madras, Chennai-600036, India, ramanv@iitm.ac.in

R. Velmurugan, P. Jeyaprakash and G.Balaganesan

ABSTRACT: Conventional metals are replaced by the composites in most of the high performance area and now its also finding application in commercial industries. Traditional fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are improved over the years with respect to their material properties and have gained an important place in the aero, naval and automobile industries. In the above industries epoxy resin and glass fiber are the most commonly used polymer matrix and fiber reinforcement respectively. Now days the properties of composites are improved using fillers in the size of nano level as reinforcement. Fillers like nano metal powders or inorganic clays with some treatment like chemical modification to its surface provide better performance than its original or natural structure. From the literature it has been found that montmorillonite (MMT) clay provides better properties to the composite and this MMT clay is the organically modified form of bentonite clay. MMT clay filled composites show competitive mechanical and vibration damping properties to fiber reinforced composites. Damping properties of glass fiber reinforced and nano clay filled hybrid composites has to be studied to improve the properties, because in the aero space industries vibration damping is considered as one of the important material property. In this work epoxy, glass fiber and montmorillonite clay are used to prepare the hybrid composite laminates by hand lay-up method. The laminates are prepared using 3layers of glass woven roving mates of 610gsm and MMT clay content varied from 0%, 1%, 3% and 5%. The impact test is performed using drop mass setup and the sharp nose projectiles are used for the test. A weight of 2.45kg is dropped from different heights and the time-amplitude response is captured using accelerometer and Data Acquisition System (DAQ) of National Instruments. The damping factor is calculated by logarithmic decrement method and the results show considerable variation due to nano clay addition. Keywords: Hybrid composite, Low velocity impact, damping response and montmorillonite clay INTRODUCTION When there is a need of light weight and high strength material, composites are the one of the best materials to choose. The mechanical properties, chemical resistance, environmental resistance etc., are the advantages of composites over the conventional metals. Traditional fiber-reinforced composites have improved over the years with respect to their material properties and have gained considerable acceptance in the aerospace industry [1]. Generally, the in-plane properties of the fiber/polymer composite are defined by the fiber properties, while the properties along the thickness dimension are defined by the characteristics of the matrix resin. Epoxy resin is the most commonly used polymer matrix with reinforcing fibers for advanced composites applications. The resins of this class have good stiffness, specific strength, dimensional stability and chemical resistance and show considerable adhesion to the embedded fiber. Using an additional phase (e.g., inorganic fillers) to strengthen the properties of epoxy resins has become a common practice. Nano-phased matrix based on organic polymers and inorganic clay minerals consisting of silicate layers such as montmorillonite (MMT) have attracted great interest because they frequently exhibit unexpected properties including reduced gas permeability, improved solvent resistance, and superior mechanical and enhanced flame-retardant properties. Different polymer/clay nanocomposites have been successfully synthesized by incorporating clay in various polymer matrixes such as polyamides polyimides, epoxy, polyurethane, poly (ethylene terephthalate) and polypropylene. The commonly used techniques for processing clay-filled nanocomposite are twin-screw extruder, highshear mixer, as well as two-/three-roll mill. For solution mixing sonication is the process which gives the improved results. Hybrid composites are made using two reinforcements in a matrix. The reinforcement may be like carbon/glass fibres, carbon/kevlar fibres and glass/natural fibres. In this area the study of vibration properties of fiber and nano particle reinforcement was limited.

To improve the properties of composites, they are made with two reinforcements glass fiber and nano clay. In low velocity impact the contact time of the impactor is more than the lowest vibration mode [1]. In this case the stress waves generated from the impact point have time to reach the support edges of the structural elements which cause the full vibration response. The vibration response will vary for different velocity of impact on the composite. Dispersion of nano clay effectively improves the internal damping of the hybrid composites [2]. For vibration damping smart memory alloy materials (SMA) are also used. SMA was formed in the form of wire and these actuators were embedded in the FRP composites. These actuator controls the vibration by creating an opposing force when vibration occurs. Using piezoelectric ceramic sensors also vibration damping is possible [3]. Nano size carbon tubes increases the structural damping level up to 200% in polymer composites with also increase in stiffness [4]. Nano particles make a better inter phase property than the fibers in which the inter phase properties affects the damping character of a composite [5]. In this paper the effect of nano clay incorporation in the epoxy/glass fiber laminates is studied. In high performance applications like aerospace applications vibration is an important parameter to be considered. During the service, undergo various types of loading. Impact loading is the most important and critical loading conditions in composites. Vibration caused by the impact loading disturbs the structural efficiency of the composite structures. In composites fiber is the major damping constituent than the matrix. Form the literature it was found that the damping efficiency increases for the addition of nano clay material for limited weight percentage [2]. EXPERIMENTS 2.1 Materials Diglycidyl ether of Bisphenol-A an di-functional epoxy along with Tri-ethylene tetra amine (TETA) curing agent is bought from Araldite. The commercial name of the resin is LY 556 and the curing agent is HY 951 respectively. The organo modified clay is used as nano reinforcement for the hybrid composite. The organo modified clay called Montmorillonite (MMT) the alkyl ammonium based clay available in the trade name Garamite-1958 from southern clay products, Gonazales, USA. Glass fiber used for reinforcement is woven roving mat (WRM) of 610gsm. 2.2 Preparation of Hybrid composites In two steps the hybrid composites were manufactured. In the first step MMT was taken and mixed with the epoxy resin using high speed shear mixer in the laboratory. Clay was mixed at 750 rpm for 2hrs. Then the mixture was placed in the vacuum oven to remove the air bubbles at room temperature, results well dispersed clay in the epoxy resin. Then 10% curing agent TETA was mixed with the epoxy resin-clay mixture by weight. Using brush and roller the mixture was applied on the fibers and the laminate was prepared by hand lay-up technique. The laminate was allowed for over night for curing and post cured at 750C for two hours in the oven. The laminate was cut in to 300mm x 300mm square specimen for test. 2.3 Drop Weight Test Drop weight test was done in the set up available in the laboratory. The specimen was fixed horizontally in the fixture which supports all the four sides of the laminate of size 300mmX300mm. An accelerator was fixed in the bottom side of the plate to measure the time response using National Instruments systems and lab view. The sharp nose projectile of mass 558 grams was fixed in a circular plate and dropped from different heights with maximum velocities at the time of strike as 2.21 m/s and 3.13 m/s using magnet. From the time response curve the damping factor of the laminate for particular impact velocity was calculated using logarithmic decrement method. The formula for finding damping factor ( ) using logarithmic decrement method is = 2/ (4 2+ 2)0.5 where = 1/n ln(x/xn+1) RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Impact response Figure 1-2. Shows time response curve for the impact velocities 2.21 m/s and 3.13 m/s for different fractions of clay additions. From the figure 1, it is very clear that the increasing clay percentage reduces the rebound. In Figure 1, for 0% clay at velocity 2.21 m/s rebound is nullified only after 500 mille seconds (ms), for 5% clay rebound is nullified within 150 ms. It is also noticed that the number of

rebounds reduced with the increase in velocity level. In Figure 1, for 1% clay at velocity 2.21m/s rebound is nullified only after 400 ms, in figure 2, at velocity 3.13 m/s rebound is nullified after 200 m/s. In the lowest velocity of impact the contact time between the specimen and the projectile is more not only due to low velocity but also the drop energy was not sufficient to penetrate the laminate. Since the contact time was more and most of the energy is converted in to vibration, but in high velocities part of the energy dissipates to penetrate the laminate and the remaining energy is used in vibration. When the velocity increases, the contact time between the specimen and projectile decreases and impact damage i.e., penetration level of projectile increases. But it is observed that for the same velocity level increase in clay addition controls the impact damage and also oscillations are very much controlled. 1000 800 600 400
Amplitude

0% clay 1% clay 5 200 400 600 800 1000 3% clay 5% clay

200 0 -200 0 -400 -600 -800

Time (ms) Fig 1. Time response curve of velocity of 2.21 m/s

1000 800 600 400 Amplitude 200 0 -200 0 -400 -600 -800 -1000 -1200 Time ms Fig 2. Time response curve of velocity of 3.13m/s 100 200 300 400 0% clay 1% clay 3% clay 5% clay

3.2 Damping Table 1. Damping Factor for hybrid composite at different velocity of impact
Specimen 0 % clay 1% clay 3% clay 5% clay Damping factor at impact velocities of 2.21 m/s 0.03084 0.04817 0.05912 0.06784 3.13 m/s 0.03642 0.05061 0.06432 0.08023

The table 1 gives the damping factors for different impact velocities between 2.21 m/s to 4.43 m/s for clay addition up to 5%.For 2.21 m/s velocity and 0% clay addition, the damping factor is 0.03084. For 5% clay addition the damping factor is 0.06784. The addition of 5% clay improves the damping factor by 20%. Also the damping factor is less for low velocity of impact. This is due to the higher contact time between the specimen and the projectile at low velocity the vibration developed is high and also as discussed earlier, most of the energy at low velocity is converted into vibration which leads to low damping factors. But it is observed that increase in nano clay percentage appreciably controls the vibration and increases the damping factor. For 3.13 m/s velocity and 0% clay addition, the damping factor is 0.03642 and for 5% clay it is 0.08023. The addition 5% clay improves the damping factor to about 1.2 times of 0% clay. For higher velocities the damping increases due to low contact time and low vibration energy is dissipated in the laminate. Hence it is clear that addition of clay gives good damping. 4. CONCLUSIONS The hybrid composites using nano clay and glass fiber as reinforcement was successfully prepared and the dynamic response was observed using drop weight impact test. The results show the addition of clay improves the damping factor and also controls the damage of the laminate. Also it is observed damping factor increases with increase in velocity. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the ARDB, Structures panel. REFERENCES:
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