Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Large composite panels and composite skins are now commonly used in aircraft structures. Such assemblies are lightweight and resistant, but they do not provide sufficient sound isolation or vibration damping. High vibration levels and cabin noise must be reduced both in helicopters and airplanes to meet new incoming vibration and noise regulations. The purpose of this project is to develop a new technology that will integrate damping elements inside composite aircraft structures from their initial design phase. The general objective is to develop low-vibration and low-noise composite panels that will satisfy aeronautics industry requirements. Composite panels will be embedded with viscoelastic damping elements. The use of viscoelastic materials has proved to be efficient for the damping of traditional engineering structures. This know-how will be transposed to composite structures. Product development will include materials testing, numerical modeling and dynamic response simulations, manufacturing procedures development, prototyping, and experimental testing of the product. The dynamic performance of the resulting panels will be evaluated against those of a non-treated composite panel. The main outputs of the research will be in the form of (1) small-scale flat panel prototypes, (2) a damped panel performance analysis report, (3) damped panel design guidelines, and (4) damped panel manufacturing procedures.