Damping performance of porous materials through dynamic analysis

Porous materials are known to be effective in absorbing noise and eliminating sounds while viscoelastic materials are lightweight materials known to significantly reduce structural vibration. Hence, the study of porous viscoelastic materials is a promising field for applications on passive noise and vibration control in many industries such as the automotive and aerospace. The goal of this work is to see whether the dissipative properties of foams can be characterized by DMA measurements and to investigate the influence of the fluid-structure interaction in porous materials on their damping performance. In this regard, dynamic experimental tests of simply supported panels with a free-layer of porous material and finite element simulations of the covered panel are analysed. Their comparison can shed light on this problem and reveal if damping effects are mainly due to the viscoelastic matrix or are also influenced by the fluid-structure interaction. As a consequence, this allows a better understanding of the complexity of the system and helps modelling the materials behavior properly.