Damping Properties of Epoxy-Embedded Piezoelectric Composites

The 0-3 and 1-3 composites have been widely used to produce various kinds of piezoelectric devices. This article focuses on the damping properties of the epoxy/piezoelectric composites. Due to the piezoelectric effect, the composites are expected to improve the damping properties and can be used in the field of vibration reduction and noise control. Two piezoelectric materials were embedded into the epoxy resin to make specimens, T-ZnOw/epoxy resin as 0-3 and PZT fibers/epoxy resin as 1-3 composite. With the method of dynamic mechanical analysis, the temperature dependence of the mechanical storage modulus and the loss factor (tanδ) were measured at different frequencies. The experimental results clearly show that the loss factor increases when testing frequency is higher. In this study, the piezoelectric damping and the viscoelastic effect are discussed and both of them contribute to the damping property of the composite system.