Experimental Analysis of Constrained Layer Damping Structures for Vibration Isolation in Lightweight Railway Vehicles

Rolling stock manufacturers face the challenge of manufacturing lightweight high-speed trains without deteriorating comfort. One of the difficulties is to mantain or increase structural stiffness and damping as the car bodies become lighter. Leaving aside active solutions, which are expensive and ge...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Melero Esteso, Miguel, Nieto Quijorna, Antonio Javier, Morales Robredo, Ángel Luis, Palomares Novalbos, Eduardo, Chicharro Higuera, José Manuel, Ramiro Redondo, María del Carmen, Pintado Sanjuán, Publio
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/39964
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.3390/app12168220
https://hdl.handle.net/10578/39964
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Constrained layer damping
Experimental modal analysis
Flexural vibration
Viscoelastic material
Descripción
Sumario:Rolling stock manufacturers face the challenge of manufacturing lightweight high-speed trains without deteriorating comfort. One of the difficulties is to mantain or increase structural stiffness and damping as the car bodies become lighter. Leaving aside active solutions, which are expensive and generally complex to implement, increasing structural damping by means of viscoelastic patches (via Constrained Layer Damping) seems to be a viable solution which is in fact already used for acoustic insulation in automotive, aerospace and even railway applications. Although there are works in the literature that try to optimise viscoelastic panels, this work presents an experimental study with two essential contributions: (i) to analyse the influence of a broad set of design parameters such as type of the constraining layer (uniform or honeycomb), thickness of the viscoelastic layer, location, covered area and continuity between patches; and (ii) to consider absolute and specific (per unit mass) damping depending on the design scenario. To locally increase the structural damping of an existing lightweight structure without compromising its weight, partial application of thin viscoelastic and constraining layers turned out to be the best solution. To enhance structural damping from the design stages, disregarding constraining layer mass by incorporating its stiffness into the overall stiffness of the structure, full coverage with thick viscoelastic layer and a honeycomb constraining layer with a high cross-section moment of inertia turned out to be the best option, reaching modal damping ratios up to 22 times higher than structures without viscoelastic materials.