Thermoplastic film materials for damping in mechanical engineering

An effective way of damping engineering structures is to use elements formed by a combination of hard and soft alternating layers. The outer rigid layers, made of structural materials, take up force infl uences, while the soft layers of viscoelastic polymers provide energy dissipation of the layered structure. The paper summarizes the results of research on the development of thin thermoplastic fi lms of plasticized polyvinyl acetate, polybutylmethacrylate and polymethylmethacrylate which have ultra-high dissipative properties and are used as a vibration-absorbing component of composite structures. It is shown that high damping properties are realized in fi lms with thickness of 0.1 –0.05 mm, which makes it possible to obtain two- and three-layer vibration-absorbing films with an extended temperature interval of effective damping in the metal-polymer-metal structures.