Effect of Fly Ash on the Damping Behaviour of Glass Fiber Reinforced Composite

Abstract

Composite materials are advanced materials which have wide range of application in engineering field due to its numerous advantages. High strength to weight ratio is of utmost demand of major industries such as automobile and aerospace, which a composite material can easily cater. One of the most common methods is reinforcing hard phase materials into the polymer matrix. This improves the strength but also increases the cost of the composite. Therefore, inexpensive reinforcements or fillers are identified and used. In this paper the effects of fly ash as filler are investigated to improve the damping properties of polymer composite on a cantilever beams made up of glass fibers. Fabrication of filler filled composites for different concentration of fillers (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 wt. %) with the matrix (Lapox C-51 resin) is done by using hand layup process. This paper presents the experimental study on damping characteristics of free vibration. Results show that the composite with 15% of filler by wt. has the highest damping of composites.

Keywords: Fly ash, modal analysis, damping, vibration composite