Prediction and experimental verification of damping in 3‐D braided textile structural composites

Abstract The material damping characteristics of 3‐D braided textile structural composites were investigated in this paper. A model for predicting damping in these materials was developed based upon the classical laminated plate theory. The model modified the existing models for predicting the static moduli of 3‐D textile structural composites by using the elastic‐viscoelastic correspondence principle. The basic engineering constants were replaced with their corresponding complex forms by applying the elastic‐viscoelastic correspondence principle to them. In this study, the basic damping loss factors (i.e. η_L, η_T, η_LT and η_vLT) were obtaiend by a modified Hashin's theory, Rule‐of‐Mixture Laws, and an indirect method on the basis of empirical works. From complex numerical results, we concluded that axial damping, flexural damping, coupling damping, and in‐plane shear damping coefficients were all functions of the yarn orientation angle and fiber volume fraction in 3‐D braided textile structural composites. Experimental data supported theoretically predicted results.