Influence of strain amplitude on damping property of aluminum foams reinforced with copper-coated carbon fibers

Aluminum foams containing 0.35, 1.0, 1.7 vol.% copper-coated carbon fibers were fabricated by a melt route. The room temperature damping property of Al/C_f foam was studied at different strain amplitude in two directions. The experimental results show that the critical strain amplitude decreases and the damping capacity of Al/C_f foam increases with the copper-coated carbon fibers contents. It can be attributed to the interfacial micro-slip increasing with the C_f contents and the microplasticity deformation arises from the micro-crack among the C_f–Al interface. Moreover, the damping property in the transverse direction is higher than that in the longitudinal direction. The ratio of longitudinal loss factor to transverse loss factor is almost independent of the C_f contents and strain amplitude.