Modeling of the coupled dynamics of damping particles filled in the cells of a honeycomb sandwich plate and experimental validation

Equipment panels of a spacecraft are made up of a sandwich composite with aluminum face sheets and a honeycomb (HC) core. The HC sandwich plate responds to the launch vibration loads subjecting the equipment mounted on it to a high level of accelerations at resonances owing to a lower natural damping. Damping particles (DPs) when inserted in the empty cells of a HC core improve the damping characteristics and reduce the resonance responses. In this work, we present a mathematical model governing the motion of the cell walls, DPs and HC plate under dynamic loading. The discrete element method (DEM) has been used to model the dynamics of the DPs wherein the contacts are modeled using modified nonlinear dissipative Hertz contact theory in conjunction with Coulomb friction. The effect of DPs on the responses at resonances, damping, and frequency response function (FRF) of the HC plate is obtained. Numerical and experimental studies were conducted on a HC plate where a selected portion of the plate was filled with DPs. The HC plate was subjected to sine sweep base acceleration at the edges to study the effect of DPs on the dynamic characteristic of the plate. The damping ratios and resonance peaks of the lower four modes of the HC plate, excited up to 1000 Hz, obtained experimentally from the FRF measurements and numerically from the DEM model compare well. The damping ratios, response at resonances and the FRF profiles are also similar. Significant improvement in damping ratios and attenuation of vibration level has been observed.