Vibration damping properties of graphene nanoplatelets filled glass/carbon fiber hybrid composites

Abstract The present study investigates the effect of carbon fiber hybridization and graphene nanoplatelets inclusion on the vibration damping properties of glass fiber reinforced polymer composites. The hand layup method was utilized with hot press molding in hybrid/non-hybrid composite plate production. A total of sixteen laminates, eight containing pure glass/epoxy and pure carbon/epoxy, and the remainder containing glass/carbon, were stacked in four different arrays and impregnated with an epoxy matrix to provide a hybrid/non-hybrid configuration. In the first hybrid configuration, the glass fiber fabric is on the outer surface and the carbon fiber fabric is on the inside of the composite plate; in the second configuration, the opposite of this sequence was used. Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs) were added into the epoxy resin in different weight fractions (0, 0.1, 0.25, and 0.5 wt%). Experimental modal analysis was performed to evaluate the natural frequency and damping ratios of the GNPs modified/unmodified test samples. According to the results obtained, carbon fiber hybridization not only increased the natural frequency but also caused a decrease in the damping ratio of the glass fiber reinforced composite material. On the other hand, incorporating 0.5% by weight of GNPs into the epoxy matrix improved damping ratios by approximately 42.1, 51.6, 16.7 and 17.2% for the G05, GC05, CG05 and C05 samples, respectively, compared to the pure samples. Also, a decrease in natural frequency and loss storage values were observed at high GNPs content.