Improved damping and mechanical properties of carbon fibrous laminates with tailored carbon nanotube/polyurethane hybrid membranes

This paper design two kinds of damping interleaves, traditional thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and novel carbon nanotube (CNT) modified TPU porous membranes are designed and respectively interleaved into the interfaces of a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP). How the interleaves affect the damping behaviors and quasi-static mechanical properties of the CFRP is comparatively investigated. Results show that both TPU and CNT/TPU interleaved CFRPs possess good damping behaviors within a wide temperature range of 50∼150°C as well as a wide frequency band from 0.1 to 30 Hz, where, the former is a little better. But, storage modulus of the CNT/TPU interleaved CFRP is always higher than that of the TPU interleaved CFRP at different temperatures and frequencies. Moreover, the flexural strength and interlaminar shear strength are both decreased by 36.0% and 24.0% for the TPU interleaved CFRP, and 20.0% and 17.8% for the CNT/TPU interleaved CFRP, respectively, when compared to the baseline CFRP, suggesting the CNT/TPU interleaf brings less negative effect on the mechanical properties of CFRP. Comparatively, CNT/TPU interleaved CFRP is more multifunctional, possessing good damping feature and reasonable mechanical properties, which is maybe more potential in the structural-functional field, especially where needs shock absorption and noise reduction.