Material Damping in Composite Rotors

The paper is concerned with material damping in composite rotors. The material damping for a high-modulus carbon fiber in epoxy resin has been investigated for different angles of filament winding. When the separate contributions on the damping from the stresses in the directions of the fibers, transverse to the fibers and in shear are taken into account, the damping coefficient has a minimum when the filament winding angle is between 10° and 45°, which fortunately for most applications is also the optimal interval for the filament winding angle to get minimum weight. To get the lowest possible dissipation energy for three different constraints, lateral eigenfrequency, maximum torque due to static stress and maximum torque due buckling, there exists an optimal filament winding angle interval. This interval is in the same region as the optimal filament winding for minimum weight.