Lightweight, Flexible Damping Treatment using a Kinetic Spacer

There has been a strong demand in vehicle light weighting in the automotive industry as the efficient fuel consumption and downsizing of the internal combustion engines to reduce CO2 emission have been a key trend in the field. Among several components of a vehicle, acoustic treatments are often targeted for the weight reduction. However, the weight reduction of a structure-borne noise treatment is not always ideal since the weight and stiffness of the treatment are two critical components to obtain desirable vibration damping performance at frequency range below 1000 Hz. In this paper, the new type of lightweight vibration damping material will be presented. The damping material was constructed using lightweight kinetic spacers that has in-plane flexibility but has high stiffness in the direction normal to the in-plane. The performance of the new damping material was evaluated using the oberst bar test and the statistically optimized nearfield acoustic holography (SONAH). As a result, comparable or higher damping performance than the conventional constraint layer damping material was achieved at a half the weight of the conventional material.