International Conference on Engineering Vibration, Sofia, Bulgaria, International Conference on Engineering Vibration 2017

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Dynamics and vibration-based monitoring of nano-enriched structural members
Irina Trendafilova, Cristobal Garcia

Last modified: 2017-11-20

Abstract


The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of the inclusion of nanofibers on the global dynamic behaviour of composite laminates. The vibratory behaviour of glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) interleaved with Nylon 6,6 nanofibers was analysed using a finite element model developed by ANSYS Workbench 16.2.The analysis of the dynamic behaviour was carried out by linear and non-linear analysis. FEM results showed that non-linear analysis has a better agreement to experimental data than conventional linear analysis. In such sense the suggested modelling offers an improvement in the accuracy of the finite element results as compared to conventional linear analysis. The present analysis of clamped-clamped beams investigates the natural frequencies, the damping and the stiffness of virgin and nano-interleaved composite laminates. Experimental and numerical results showed a significant effect of nanofibers on the dynamic behaviour of the composites. Nano-modified composites demonstrated a consistent increase in the damping ratio and inter-laminar strength. However, the variation in natural frequencies and stiffness due to the nanofibers was very small. The novelty of the study is in the analysis of the dynamic behaviour of GFRP with and w/o nanofibers and the development of a new methodology to analyse the vibration behaviour of nano-enriched composites. This study also investigates the possibility for using vibration-based monitoring for the purposes of delamination detection in the above described structural members. This is based on an experimental investigation which explores the variation of the first natural frequencies of the specimens with damage.