Effect of Graphene Reinforcement on Damping Properties of Epoxy/Glass Hybrid Composites

Abstract: The main objective of this work was to investigate the influence of graphene reinforcement on natural frequency and mode shapes of epoxy / glass fibre / graphene hybrid composites. The graphene of 3, 4 and 5 wt.% were dispersed in the epoxy resin by ultra-sonication, then the hybrid composite laminates were fabricated by hand layup technique Damping characteristics of the developed hybrid composite laminates were determined experimentally using Model test rig and numerical method using ANSYS workbench. The natural frequencies of the first three modes for the hybrid composites were increased by 8.05, 6.64 and 1.09% due to the presence of graphene leading to higher global stiffness. On the other hand, the damping ratio of the first three modes for the hybrid composites decreased by 35.29, 57.63 and 49.25%, respectively, because of the decrease in surface area available for energy dissipation caused by the graphene reinforcement. The numerical validation revealed that the deviation for the first mode is higher as compared to the other two modes