Preparation and Characterization of Natural Fiber Filled Asphalt based Damping Material

Abstract

Asphalt based damping material filled with glass fiber is commonly used as free layer damping material (FDM) for body-in-white of automotive industry. However, the manufacturing of artificial material and end of disposal are the major problems to the environment. To overcome this problem, synthetic materials are being replaced by natural fibers as fillers. This research involves the production and characterization of FDM with different weight percentage (0, 5, 10, 15) of kenaf fiber loadings. The FDM composites were produced through mechanical mixing and hot pressing process. For damping performance, FDM with 10% kenaf fiber loading shows the maximum dynamic modulus and loss factor in Dynamic Mechanical Analysis and Oberst Beam Method test respectively. FDM with 10% fiber loading also shows the lowest weight loss due to thermal degradation as compared to other FDM composites. FDM with 10% kenaf fiber loading provides the best damping performance among all the FDM composites (0 ~ 15%) at room temperature which may attribute from the better viscoelastic nature ofasphalt and kenaf fiber.