Specific Damping Capacity of CuZn and CuZnAl Metal Foams, a Preliminary Study

Characterization of specific damping capacity of metal foams is hereafter presented. The ability of foams to act as vibration insulators comes from their capability to dissipate energy through bending and buckling of the cell walls and struts and is enhanced by internal friction and dislocation motion phenomena. However, existing literature studies mainly investigated foams damping performance within a frequency range generally not suitable for space application, i.e. between quasi-static and tens of hertz. Thus, performed activity aims to explore the damping performance of commercially available CuZn and superelastic CuZnAl foams to assess applicability of such materials in designing interface dampers for space applications. A proper setup has been designed to measure damping capacity of metal foams in dynamic compressive mode, within different excitation frequency and deformation amplitudes.