High damping and modulus of aluminum matrix composites reinforced with carbon nanotube skeleton inspired by diamond lattice

F Wang and L Li and XL Jiang and HS Tang and XL Wang and YJ Hu, COMPOSITE STRUCTURES, 323, 117451 (2023).

DOI: 10.1016/j.compstruct.2023.117451

Damping and modulus are mutually exclusive properties, and optimizing the overall performance of damping and modulus of materials is of high interest nowadays. In this study, a novel aluminum matrix composite reinforced by a diamond lattice-inspired carbon nanotube skeleton is presented. By means of molecular dynamics simulation, it is demonstrated that the structure can not only increase the internal friction by introducing interface defects, but also ensure the sufficient modulus of the material through the cooperative deformation of sliding and extrusion between the carbon nanotube skeleton and the aluminum matrix. Furthermore, the effect of frequency on energy dissipation is calculated. In contrast to conventional materials possessing a single internal friction peak, this composite structure material has two internal dissipation peaks as a function of frequency. This is due to the fact that viscous and phonon dissipation dominate the energy dissipation in this structural material. The viscous dissipation is caused by the relaxation of disordered atoms in the interface after deviating from the equilibrium state, and the phonon dissipation is created by the coupling of mechanical waves and normal modes of crystalline atoms. The designed composite achieves an unprecedented loss modulus through a trade-off between modulus and damping.

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