Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154

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Composite Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

Evaluation of the damping of hybrid carbon–flax reinforced composites

Mustapha Assarar a,⇑, Wajdi Zouari a, Hamid Sabhi a, Rezak Ayad a, Jean-Marie Berthelot b
a
University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, LISM EA 4695, IUT de Troyes, 9 rue de Québec, 10026 Troyes cedex, France
b
ISMANS, Institute for Advanced Materials and Mechanics, 44 avenue Bartholdi, 72000 Le Mans, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The object of the paper is to investigate the effects of staking sequences and hybridation on the damping
Available online 9 May 2015 properties of flax–carbon twill epoxy composites. Various staking sequences of these hybrid laminates
were manufactured by platen press process. Next, dynamic properties were investigated using beam test
Keywords: specimens and an impulse technique. Damping modelling was implemented by using a finite element
Flax fibre analysis to evaluate the dissipated energies in each layer of carbon–flax laminates. The obtained results
Carbon fibre show a good agreement between the experimental damping coefficients and those deduced from
Hybrid composites
modelling. It is also shown that the position of flax layers within the hybrid composites plays a major role
Vibration testing
Damping
on their bending stiffness and damping properties.
Modelling Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction [15]. Currently, the dynamic behaviour of traditional composites

The glass, carbon and Kevlar fibres reinforced polymer compos-
ites know a continuously increasing development in all the indus-
trial domains such as marine, aerospace, sports, etc. Today, natural
fibres reinforced polymer composites are emerging in the compos-
ite applications because they are ecological, their resources are
renewable and they are considered neutral toward CO2 emissions
[1]. Thus, due to their good specific properties, natural fibres could
constitute, in particular applications, an interesting alternative to
glass fibres [2,3]. Consequently, various natural fibres reinforced
polymer composites were the subject of several studies [4–14].
In particular, the effect of natural fibres treatment on the mechan-
ical properties of these composites, the degradation of their
mechanical properties in a hygrothermal environment and their
different damage modes during the failure process were studied
[4,9,11,14]. Furthermore, these studies are not sufficient because
the development of natural fibres reinforced composite materials
in high performance applications requires further information
about their dynamic properties such as damping. Indeed, the prob-
lem of energy dissipation constitutes an important factor in the
mechanical design of structures. Sufficient damping is needed to
reduce vibration of structures as well as to avoid fatigue fracture.
Moreover, the control of damping phenomena of composite mate-
rials passes by the knowledge of the different damping processes,
such as the viscoelastic behaviour of the matrix, the damping of
the fibre–matrix interphase and the damping due to damage
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 325 42 46 15; fax: +33 325 42 70 98.
E-mail address: mustapha.assarar@univ-reims.fr (M. Assarar).
was thoroughly studied as reported in several papers [16–23].
The initial works on damping analysis of traditional fibres
reinforced composites were specifically developed in [16,17].
Next, several concepts were used to model the damping of these
composites [18,19]. In particular, extensive analyses of the damp-
ing of glass and Kevlar reinforced composites and laminates with
interleaved viscoelastic layers were reported by Berthelot [20,21]
and Berthelot and Sefrani using the Ritz method [22,23].
For natural fibre composites, some researchers have already
analysed experimentally damping performances [24–27]. For
example, Wielage et al. [24] studied the dynamic properties of flax,
hemp and glass fibres reinforced polypropylene composites using
the Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA). They found that, for
the same conditions, the loss factors of flax and hemp composites
are significantly higher than the glass ones. Recently, Duc et al. [25]
analysed the effect of several parameters on the damping proper-
ties of flax fibre reinforced composites such as the impregnation
quality, the fibre–matrix adhesion, the twist angle of yarns and
crimp in flax fabrics. They particularly observed an increase in
the damping properties with fibre twist and crimp showing the
important friction mechanisms which are induced. In another
work, Le Guen et al. [28] analysed the effect of fibre treatment with
polyols on the damping of flax fibre reinforced epoxy composites.
They observed a higher damping behaviour of treated flax fibre
composites compared with the non-treated ones. This could be
attributed to the formation of hydrogen bonds between the polyols
and flax micro fibrils within the lamellae as explained in [28]. Duc
et al. [26,27] compared the damping properties of carbon, glass and
flax fibres composites by considering the DMA and vibration beam

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2015.05.016
0263-8223/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154 149

testing. In particular, they showed that flax fibre reinforced com- Table 2
posites present a relatively higher damping behaviour with respect Engineering constants of the non-hybrid twill carbon and flax reinforced composite
materials.
to the other composites which could be attributed to the different
friction mechanisms intrinsic to flax fibres. Laminates EL ET GLT v LT
These studies showed that the use of natural fibres as reinforce- (GPa) (GPa) (GPa)

ment of composite materials can significantly improve their damp- Carbon fibre reinforced epoxy 54.10 54.10 3.60 0.33
ing properties and reduce unwanted vibrations of structural laminate
Flax fibre reinforced epoxy laminate 11.50 11.50 2.01 0.31
applications. For high performance applications, damping could
be, in some cases, insufficient for their safe design. In fact, it should
be combined with mechanical performances. It is within this
context that the present study of the mechanical and dynamic
properties of carbon–flax hybrid composites is proposed. This
choice is motivated by the high mechanical performance of carbon
fibre as well as the interesting dynamic properties of flax fibre. For
this purpose, non-hybrid and hybrid carbon and flax fibre rein-
forced composites were elaborated to determine, by free vibration
testing, the effects of hybridation on the dynamic properties of
hybrid composites. Next, we will show how the laminate theory
associated to a finite element analysis allows us to describe the
damping characteristics of these hybrid composites.

2. Experimental procedure

2.1. Materials

Several non-hybrid and hybrid laminates were prepared by

impregnating flax and carbon fibres with SR 1500 epoxy resin
and SD 2503 hardener. Carbon twill of 300 g/m2 and flax twill of
350 g/m2 were used. The plates of hybrid and non-hybrid lami-
nates were manufactured by platen press process: the different
fabrics were first impregnated one by one with the resin and then
placed between two steel trays to be cured at 35 °C for 3 h with a Fig. 1. Experimental equipment.

pressure of 5 bars.
Six types of twill hybrid laminates with different stacking
sequences, shown in Table 1, were elaborated to investigate the
effect of hybridation type on the composites damping. The thick-
ness and volume fraction of each plate depend on the considered
laminate as indicated in Table 1.
The engineering constants of flax and carbon laminates referred
to the material directions ð1; 2; 3Þ or ðL; T; T 0 Þ were measured in
static tensile tests on five specimens. The obtained mean values
are reported in Table 2.
2.2. Experimental equipment
The dynamic characteristics of the studied composite materials
were derived from the analysis of the free flexural vibrations of the
test specimens. The equipment is shown in Fig. 1. The test
specimens are supported vertically by two fine rubber threads in
such a way to have free-free boundary conditions of the beam.
An impulse hammer (PCB 086C03 model) is used to induce the
excitation of the flexural vibrations of the composite beam.
The specimen response was then detected by an accelerometer
(PCB 352C23 model) which measures the acceleration of the
transverse vibrations. Next, the excitation and the response signals
were digitalized by a dynamic analyser LMS SCADAS Mobile. This
analyser associated with a PC computer performs the acquisition
of signals, controls the acquisition conditions and the analysis of
the acquired signals. The system allows the simultaneous acquisi-
tion of four signals with a maximum sampling frequency of
102.4 kHz with a resolution of 24 bits for each channel. Impulse
excitations of flexural vibrations were implemented at different
points of the beam, and the response was detected at the
accelerometer as shown in Fig. 1. These experimental analyses
were performed on five specimens with different lengths 230,
250 and 270 mm in order to obtain a variation of the peak frequen-
cies values. The experimental shapes of the natural modes were
also estimated by the LMS PolyMAX method [29]. This method is
globally divided in two steps: first, a stabilization algorithm is used
to determine the natural frequencies as well as their corresponding
damping, and second, a least squares frequency domain (LSFD)
method is used to calculate the mode shapes. The obtained
experimental modes were visualised in order to verify that they
correspond to bending modes of beams with two free ends.

Table 1
Designation of the non-hybrid and hybrid laminate composites.

Laminates Ply number ratio (carbon/flax) Stacking sequence C: Carbon F: Flax Plate thickness (mm) (Carbon/Flax) Volume fraction ratio (%) (Carbon/Flax)
Carbon 8/0 CCCCCCCC 2.6/0 52/0
[C3/F]S 6/2 CCCFFCCC 1.4/1.1 40/12
[C2/F2]S 4/4 CCFFFFCC 0.6/1 25/22
[C/F3]S 2/6 CFFFFFFC 0.4/2.5 15/35
Flax 0/8 FFFFFFFF 0/3.8 0/39
[F3/C]S 2/6 FFFCCFFF 0.4/2.7 14/35
[F2/C2]S 4/4 FFCCCCFF 0.8/2.1 24/22
[F/C3]S 6/2 FCCCCCCF 1.3/1.1 41/12
150 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154

Only flexural vibrations are investigated in this work. As the thick-

nesses of the test specimens are well lower than their lengths,
transverse shear stresses could consequently be neglected in the
finite element analysis.
For each natural mode, the finite element analysis calculates the
values of in-plane stresses r11 ; r22 ; r12 and strains e11 ; e22 ; e12 ; in
the material directions ð1; 2; 3 Þ or ðL; T; T 0 Þ, at the lower (l) and
upper (u) faces of each layer k of the element e as shown in
Fig. 3. Two index notation with two indices or one index notation
can be used as follows:

rk;e k;e k;e

11l ; r22l ; r12l ; rk;e k;e k;e
1l ; r2l ; r6l

rk;e k;e k;e

11u ; r22u ; r12u ; rk;e k;e k;e
1u ; r2u ; r6u ;
or ð1Þ
ek;e k;e k;e
11l ; e22l ; e12l ; ek;e k;e k;e
1l ; e2l ; e6l ;

ek;e k;e k;e

11u ; e22u ; e12u ; ek;e k;e k;e
1u ; e2u ; e6u ;

Fig. 2. Evolution of the loss factor according to the sample number of the
and this for each element e of the structure. For each layer,
acquisition system. through-the-thickness in-plane stresses and strains are linear func-
tions of the z coordinate and are expressed as:
k;e k;e
2.3. Analysis of the experimental results rk;e
p ¼ a1p ðx; yÞz þ b1p ðx; yÞ;
k;e
p ¼ 1; 2; 6 ð2Þ
k;e
ek;e
p ¼ a2p ðx; yÞz þ b2p ðx; yÞ:
The determination of the natural frequencies and damping
coefficients of the tested specimens was done by fitting the with:
experimental responses with the LMS software using the k;e k;e
PloyMax (Polyreference Modal Analysis eXtended) method [29].
rk;e
pu  rpl ek;e
pu  epl
ak;e
1p ¼ k;e
; ak;e
2p ¼ k;e
;
A second identification was also done by fitting the experimental h h
Frequency Response Functions (FRF) with the analytical response
  zk;e   zk;e
k;e k;e k;e k;e
b1p ¼ rk;e
pu  rk;e
pu  rpl ; b2p ¼ ek;e
pu  ek;e
pu  epl : ð3Þ
of free–free beam. This fitting was obtained by a least square h
k;e
h
k;e

method using the optimisation toolbox of Matlab. More details

k;e
about this procedure can be found in the authors previous where h and zk;e are the thickness and z coordinate of the layer k
publications [23,30]. It is worth noting that the two processes led of the element e.
to similar results. It results that the in-plane energy U k;e stored in the layer k of the
Particular attention must be paid to the need of using a element e can be calculated from the in-plane strain energies
sufficient number of samples to store a correct acquisition of the referred to the material directions as:
time vibration for low frequencies. As an example, we report in
U k;e ¼ U k;e k;e k;e
11 þ U 22 þ U 66 ð4Þ
Fig. 2 the loss factor obtained for a frequency of 200 Hz as a func-
tion of the sample number of the time acquisition. It is observed with:
that it is necessary to have a sample number higher than 8000 ZZZ Z
samples to obtain correct results. Indeed, for lower frequencies 1 Se
U k;e
11 ¼ rk;e k;e
1 e1 dxdydz ¼ rk;e k;e
1 e1 dz;
the loss factor measures the attenuation of the acquisition system. 2 k 2 k
ZZZ Z
1 Se
U k;e
22 ¼ rk;e k;e
2 e2 dxdydz ¼ rk;e k;e
2 e2 dz; ð5Þ
3. Modelling of laminate damping 2 k 2 k
ZZZ Z
1 Se
To evaluate the structural damping, Ungar and Kewin [31,32] U k;e
66 ¼ rk;e k;e
6 e6 dxdydz ¼ rk;e k;e
6 e6 dz:
2 k 2 k
initially introduced the energy approach by considering that the
total dissipated energy can be described as the sum of separable where Se is the area of the finite element e. These integrals are
energy dissipations in the material directions. Berthelot and exactly determined based on the linear expressions of stresses
Sefrani [21,23] extended this concept for analysing the damping and strains shown in Eq. (2).
of different unidirectional and orthotropic laminates using the Next, the energy dissipated by damping in the layer k of the
Ritz method. The Ritz method is restricted to the analysis of rect- multi-layered element e can be derived from the strain energy
angular plates or beams. In the case of complex shape structures, stored in this layer as:
it is possible to use the finite element method to analyse the
dynamic behaviour of the structures. This method was also used DU k;e ¼ wk11 U k;e k k;e k k;e
11 þ w22 U 22 þ w66 U 66 ; ð6Þ
to describe the damping properties of traditional fibre reinforced
laminates with interleaved viscoelastic layers and sandwich mate- where wk11
and wk22
are the specific damping coefficients in the lon-
rials [33–35]. gitudinal (1) and transverse (2) directions of the material constitut-
The main purpose of this part is to apply the energy approach to ing the layer k, respectively, and wk66 is its in-plane shear damping
evaluate the structural damping of flax–carbon hybrid composites coefficient.
with different stacking sequences. It is within this context that free It results that the total in-plane strain energy stored in the finite
vibrations of the tested specimens are investigated with a element assemblage is obtained by summation, over each layer
four-node multilayered shell finite element, named S4, of the and then each element as:
commercial code Abaqus. This element is a doubly-curved general
U ¼ U 11 þ U 22 þ U 66 ð7Þ
purpose element based on the first-order laminate theory [36–38].
 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154 151

Fig. 3. Stresses and strains derived from the S4 finite element in the layer k.

with w11 while ET and w22 were identified in the 90° direction. At last
X X X X with the previous measured values, on identification was carried
U 11 ¼ U k;e
11 ; U 22 ¼ U k;e
22 ; U 66 out for an intermediate orientation, 45° for example, to derive
elements;e layers;k elements;e layers;k
X X GLT and w66 . The use of different lengths (230, 250 and 270 mm)
¼ U k;e
66 : ð8Þ of the beams allows us to evaluate the variation of the parameters
elements;e layers;k as a function of the frequency. The results are reported in Fig. 4 for
In the same way, the total in-plane strain energy dissipated by the engineering constants and in Fig. 5 for the specific damping
damping in the finite element assemblage is derived as: coefficients.
X X The values of the Young’s moduli increase slightly with the fre-
DU ¼ wk11 U k;e k k;e k k;e
11 þ w22 U 22 þ w66 U 66 ; ð9Þ quency (0.1% to 5%) for the carbon laminates and the flax
element;e layers;k laminates.
Thus, for each natural mode, the damping of the structure into For the damping coefficients it is observed two different beha-
consideration is derived as: viours of the laminates. In fact, the damping coefficients increase
slightly with the frequency for carbon laminates while they are
DU found to decrease for flax laminates. Moreover, the damping coef-
w¼ : ð10Þ
U ficients w11 and w22 of flax fibre laminates are significantly higher
than carbon damping coefficients (from 200% to 283%) with
4. Results and discussion respect to the considered frequency domain. On the other hand,
the damping w66 of flax laminates is found to be 82% to 125% higher
4.1. Characteristics of the non-hybrid flax and carbon laminates than carbon composites. These differences could be related to the
flax fibre architecture which induces a high internal friction. The
The flax and carbon laminates are balanced orthotropic materi- morphology of flax fibre promotes dissipation of energy through
als. Thus, they are mainly characterised by two engineering con- friction between cellulose and hemicellulose in each cell wall
stants and two specific damping coefficients, measured in the and friction between the cell walls [26]. Friction processes are
material directions: the Young’s moduli along the warp and weft developed in the low frequency domain that could explain the
directions EL ¼ ET ; the in-plane shear modulus GLT ; and the damp- increase of damping in the low frequency domain. Also it has to
ing coefficients: w11 ¼ w22 and w66 . These parameters were derived be noted that the damping evolution is fairly the same for the coef-
by identification of the experimental responses of free-free beams ficients w11 , w22 and w66 . We verified that the values of the coeffi-
with the results obtained by the finite element analysis (Sections cients were independent of the amplitudes of the vibrations.
2.2 and 3). The identification in the 0° direction leads to EL and These values of the damping coefficients will be used in a finite

25.0
60 Flax laminates
55 22.5
Carbon laminates
50
EL= ET
20.0 ψ66
Specific damping ψ (%)
Young's modulus E (GPa)

45 17.5
ψ11= ψ22
40 15.0
35
Carbon laminates
12.5
30 Flax laminates ψ66
10.0
25
7.5 ψ11= ψ22
20
5.0
15
EL= ET 2.5
10
0.0
5 0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100
0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100 Frequency (Hz)
Frequency (Hz)
Fig. 5. Comparison between the values of the specific damping coefficients of non-
Fig. 4. Experimental results obtained for the Young’s moduli as a function of the hybrid carbon and flax laminates derived from the experimental investigation and
frequency for the non-hybrid carbon and flax laminates. the results obtained by the finite element analysis.
152 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154

element analysis to estimate the damping evolution of hybrid flax–
carbon composites as reported in the following section.
4.2. Properties of the hybrid carbon–flax laminates
4.2.1. Finite element analysis of the hybrid laminates
The procedure developed in Section 3 was applied to the differ-
ent stacking sequences of the hybrid laminates (Table 1). The finite
element analysis was implemented introducing in each layer of
each element the values of the Young’s moduli (EL, ET, GLT) and
the values of the damping coefficients w11 , w22 and w66 derived
from the finite analysis. This procedure gives the values of the nat-
ural frequencies and the global damping coefficients of the lami-
nates into consideration. Several lengths (230, 250 and 270 mm)
of the free-free test specimens were investigated in such a way
to obtain the variation of the parameters with the frequency. The
results were also compared with the experimental results deduced
from the modal analysis of the experimental Fourier responses of
free-free beams (Section 2.3).
4.2.2. Bending stiffness
The natural angular frequencies of an orthotropic beam with
two free ends can be expressed [37,38] for the first three modes as:
m ¼ 1 x1 ¼ 22:373x0
m ¼ 2 x2 ¼ 61:673x0
m ¼ 3 x3 ¼ 120:90x0
Fig. 7 reports the bending modulus as a function of the carbon
fibre volume content of the different stacking sequences for a fre-
quency of 500 Hz. Usual results are obtained. The bending modulus
increases with the carbon content more especially when they are
placed as external layers of the hybrid laminates. As an example,
for about 15% of carbon fibre content, the increase of the bending
flexion is about 10% for [F3/C]S laminates compared to the flax
composites, while this increase is more than 148% for [C/F3]S
laminates.
4.2.3. Damping
Fig. 8 reports the results deduced from the experimental inves-
tigation and from the modelling for different stacking sequences of
the hybrid composites. The results are in good agreement.
Moreover it is observed two different evolutions of the specific
damping according to the stacking sequence. For the [C3/F]S,
[C2/F2]S and [C/F3]S laminates where the external layers are the car-
bon layers, the damping coefficient is low and increases slightly
with the frequency (Fig. 8). In fact, the energy is essentially dissi-
pated by the external carbon layers and consequently, the damping
evolution is similar to the carbon laminates (Fig. 8). In contrast the
damping decreases for the [F/C3]S, [F2/C2]S and [F3/C]S laminates
where the external layers are the flax layers. So, the energy is
ð11Þ
60 420
Carbon laminates

Variation of bending modulus Efx (%)

55
[ C 3 /F] s 360
with
Bending modulus Efx (GPa)

50
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi [C2/F2]s
3 45 300
1 Efx h
x0 ¼ 2 ð12Þ
L 12qs 40 240

where Efx is the bending modulus of the beam, L is the length, h is 35

180
the thickness and qs is the surface density. These relations show 30 [C/F3]s
that the values of the natural frequencies give an evaluation of 25
Flax laminates
120
[F/C3]s
the bending stiffness of the beam by deducing the bending modulus
20
from the values of the natural frequencies. [F2/C2]s 60
[F3/C]s
Fig. 6 compares the results deduced from the finite element 15
analysis and the experimental results obtained for the variations 10
0
of the bending modulus with respect to the frequency for the differ- 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
ent stacking sequences of the hybrid laminates. The results are sim- Carbon fibre volume content (%)
ilar and show that the bending modulus increases slightly (from 2
Fig. 7. Evolution of the bending modulus according to the carbon fibre volume
to 10%) with the frequency. This results from the increasing of the content for different stacking sequences at 500 Hz.
Young’s moduli of carbon laminates and flax laminates (Fig. 4).

60
Carbon laminates
55
[C3/F]s
Bending modulus Efx (GPa)

50
[C2/F2]s
45
40 Experiment results
35 Modelling

30 [C/F3]s
25
[F/C3]s
20
[F2/C2]s
15 [F3/C]s

10 Flax laminates
0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800 2100
Frequency (Hz)
Fig. 6. Comparison between the experimental results obtained for the bending Fig. 8. Comparison between the experimental results obtained for the damping
modulus of the hybrid flax–carbon laminates and the ones derived by the finite coefficients of the hybrid flax–carbon laminates and the ones derived by the finite
element procedure as functions of the frequency for different hybridations. element procedure as functions of the frequency for different hybridations.
 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154 153

dissipated essentially by the flax layers leading to properties sim-

ilar to flax laminates (Fig. 8).
To better appreciate the repartition of the energies dissipated in
the flax and carbon layers, Fig. 9 shows the comparison between
energies dissipated at 500 Hz in the layers of the hybrid laminates
for different stacking sequences. The results show that the energies

20
Composite
Carbon layers Flax
18
Flax layers
16

14

12
ΔU/Utotal

10 [C/F3]s Fig. 11. Evolution of the damping and specific bending modulus according to
different stacking sequences at 500 Hz.
8
[C2/F2]s
6 Carbon [C3/F]s dissipated in the [C3/F]S and [C2/F2]S laminates are essentially
due to carbon layers: 66% to 94%. For [F/C3]S and [F2/C2]S laminates,
4
the dissipation is clearly governed by the flax layers: 90% to
2 97%.
The evolution of the damping as a function of the flax fibre vol-
0
ume content for the different stacking sequences is reported in
(a)
Fig. 10 for a frequency of 500 Hz. A significant increase in specific
20 damping is observed when the flax fibres are placed outside the
Composite
Carbon layers [F3/C]s Flax hybrid laminates. For example, the damping increases by about
18 [F2/C2]s
Flax layers 6% for the [C3/F]S laminate and 196% for the [F/C3]S compared to
16 the carbon laminates. This difference is attributed principally to
[F/C3]s the damping in carbon and flax fibres as shown in Fig. 8 and
14
already reported in the case of other traditional composites
12 [34,35].
ΔU/Utotal

10
4.2.4. Parametric study
8 The study implemented previously on the different hybrid lam-
6 inates showed that the finite element procedure allows us to
Carbon derive correctly the dynamic properties of hybrid carbon–flax lam-
4 inates. Also, this analysis demonstrated that structural damping of
2 these materials is strongly related to their bending stiffness and
dissipated energy in carbon and flax fibres.
0 Thus, a short parametric study is implemented to show how it is
(b) possible to combine both mechanical performances of carbon fibre
and interesting damping properties of flax fibres. In this
Fig. 9. Comparison between energies dissipated in carbon and flax layers of the
studied laminates at 500 Hz: (a) flax layers placed inside the carbon fibre laminates context three stacking sequences ([F/C/C/C/C/F], [C/C/F/F/C/C] and
and (b) flax layers placed outside the carbon fibre laminates. [C/F/C/C/F/C]) are analysed by the finite element procedure
(Section 2.2). For each of these stacking sequences, the total
thickness of the carbon and flax layers are 5 and 1 mm,
respectively.
Fig. 11 presents the evolution of the damping and specific bend-
ing modulus according to the different stacking sequences for a fre-
quency of 500 Hz. It is clearly observed that the addition of two flax
fibre layers to the carbon laminate increases significantly its damp-
ing by 15% to 30%. We also note that the [C/F/C/C/F/C] laminate is
very interesting in terms of rigidity and damping compared to the
[C/C/F/F/C/C] laminate. In fact, for practically the same specific
modulus as the carbon laminate, the stacking sequence
[C/F/C/C/F/C] increases its damping by about 15% vs. 2% for
[C/C/F/F/C/C].

5. Conclusion

This paper presents the results derived from experimental

investigation and from a finite element procedure for the dynamic
properties hybrid flax–carbon laminates. Different non-hybrid and
Fig. 10. Evolution of the specific damping according to the flax fibre volume hybrid laminates were studied in order to determine the effect of
content for different stacking sequences at 500 Hz. staking sequence on the bending stiffness and damping of these
154 M. Assarar et al. / Composite Structures 132 (2015) 148–154
laminates. Experimental dynamic properties of these laminates
were evaluated using free-free beam specimens subjected to an
impulse input. Loss factors were identified by fitting the experi-
mental responses with the LMS software or with the analytical
solution of free-free beam bending vibrations. Damping modelling
was implemented using a finite element based procedure to eval-
uate the different strain energies dissipated in each layer of the
laminates.
The comparison between the results deduced from the experi-
mental investigation and those derived from the finite element
analysis shows that the modelling describes fairly well the damp-
ing properties of the studied hybrid laminates. The obtained results
show that the damping coefficients of flax laminates are higher
than those of carbon composites as reported in the literature.
The dynamic and mechanical properties were found to highly
depend on the stacking sequence of flax and carbon layers.
For example, it was shown that adding two flax layers outside a
carbon laminate enhances considerably its damping and in the
same time decreases its bending modulus. Nevertheless, it was also
shown that some flax–carbon hybridations can lead to bending
stiffness comparable to carbon laminate with enhanced damping
properties. Indeed, the specific damping of the [C/F/C/C/F/C] lami-
nate was found to increase by 15% with respect to the non-hybrid
carbon laminate without losing its specific bending modulus.
This study was realised on hybrid laminates with external,
internal and alternated flax and carbon layers. For the future work,
it would be interesting to perform an equivalent analysis on com-
posites reinforced by hybrid carbon–flax fabrics with different
fibres rates and architecture. It would be also interesting to apply
this approach to estimate the dynamic response of structures with
complex shapes.
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