Damping of flexural vibrations in glass fibre composite plates and honeycomb sandwich panels containing indentations of power-law profile

In this paper, the results of the experimental investigation into the addition of indentations of power-law profile into composite plates and panels and their subsequent inclusion into composite honeycomb sandwich panels are reported. The composite plates in question are sheets of composite with visible indentations of power-law profile. A panel is a sheet of composite with the indentations encased within the sample. This makes a panel similar in surface texture to an un-machined composite sheet (reference plate) or conventional honeycomb sandwich panel. In the case of quadratic or higher-order profiles, the above-mentioned indentations act as two-dimensional acoustic black holes (ABH) for flexural waves that can absorb a large proportion of the incident wave energy. For all the composite samples tested in this investigation, the addition of two-dimensional acoustic black holes resulted in further increase in damping of resonant vibrations, in addition to the already substantial inherent damping due to large values of the loss factor for composites. Due to large values of the loss factor for composite materials, there was no need to use attached absorbing layers to implement the acoustic black hole effect.