A procedure for the evaluation of damping effects in composite laminated structures

The paper presents an approach based on experimental tests and numerical simulations for taking into account damping effects during the design and the analysis of composite structures. The experiments are conducted using the Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) and unidirectional coupons are tested to characterize the damping properties of the plies. Starting from these results, first order shear deformation theory is applied to determine the damping properties of the laminate, which are then used in the context of a numerical procedure based on finite element analyses and strain energy method. The results are presented for an aircraft stiffened panel, illustrating the evaluation of the specific damping capacities of the structure, and performing direct transient analyses to investigate the effect of damping on the panel response to pulse loadings.