Experimental Damping Studies of FRP Hybrid Nanocomposites with Nano Reinforcement

Traditional fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are improved over the years with respect to their material properties and have gained an important place in the aero, naval and automobile industries. In the above industries, epoxy resin as polymer matrix and glass fiber for fiber reinforcement are most commonly used. Of Late, the properties of composites are improved using fillers in the size of nano level as reinforcement. Fillers like nano silica and inorganic clays with some treatment like chemical modification to the surface provide better performance than its natural structure. In this work nano silica and Halloysite nano clays are organically modified by 3aminopropyltriethoxysilane and prepare the hybrid nanocomposite laminates by hand lay-up method. The laminates are prepared using 5-layers of glass woven roving mates of 610gsm and nano filler content varied from 0, 1, 2 and 3wt%. Nano filler filled composites show competitive mechanical and vibration damping properties to fiber reinforced composites.