Design for damping

Product noise and vibration problems are often generated by the vibrating surfaces of sheet metal components that exhibit low levels of inherent material damping. One method of solution is to increase the level of damping to these sheet metal components by manufacturing them from damped laminate material instead of plain sheet metal. The laminate metal consists of two layers of sheet metal sandwiched together with a thin, energy absorbing viscoelastic core. The reduced vibration in the product is achieved by converting the vibration energy into heat energy dissipated by the viscoelastic material as the part is subject to cyclic oscillation.