Effects of multi walled carbon nanotubes and multilayer graphene on the damping and quasi-static compressive mechanical properties of novel EP/ZA22 composites

In order to develop novel high damping materials with excellent compressive mechanical properties and energy absorption capacity to meet the needs of buffering and vibration reduction in various fields, epoxy resin (EP) filled foam Zn-22Al (ZA22) composites were fabricated for the first time. EP can significantly improve the damping and compressive mechanical properties of the ZA22 foam due to the superposition of multiple damping sources and the support of EP to pores, respectively. However, the filling of EP will lead to brittleness in the compression process of the composites. It is found that the addition of multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) or multilayer graphene (MLG) to EP can efficiently improve the toughness of the composites because of the increased energy consumption in the fracture process of EP, and the damping can also be further improved due to the increased interface density and the amount of polymer chains involved in friction.