Effect of Steel Wire Mesh Reinforcement on Stiffness and Damping Properties of Polymer Concrete for Machine Tool Applications

High damping with adequate static stiffness is essential for improving the dynamic characteristics of machine tool structures. Generally, machine tool structures made of cast iron and cast steel have better castability for making complex shapes but they possess limited damping characteristics. Research in the field of machine tools has paved the way for the use of alternate materials such as granite epoxy, polymer concrete, nettle polyester to improve damping characteristics. Among all alternate materials for machine tools, epoxy granite has better damping capacity than cast iron but it lacks structural stiffness. The present work focuses on overcoming the above limitation by incorporating steel wire mesh as reinforcement in EG structure and deriving the benefit of damping without compromising the static stiffness. Experiments were conducted by fabricating nine different specimens with different material compositions and wire mesh sizes to achieve higher bending stiffness and damping ratio. Further, the influence of wire diameter and the number of layers of wire mesh on stiffness and damping properties were investigated.