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Damping analysis of nonwoven natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites

used in automotive interior parts

Hajer Hadiji, Mustapha Assarar, Wajdi Zouari, Floran Pierre, Karim Behlouli, Bassem
Zouari, Rezak Ayad

PII: S0142-9418(20)30447-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2020.106692
Reference: POTE 106692

To appear in: Polymer Testing

Received Date: 21 February 2020

Revised Date: 26 May 2020
Accepted Date: 10 June 2020

Please cite this article as: H. Hadiji, M. Assarar, W. Zouari, F. Pierre, K. Behlouli, B. Zouari, R. Ayad,
Damping analysis of nonwoven natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites used in automotive
interior parts, Polymer Testing (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2020.106692.

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 AUTHORSHIP STATEMENT

Manuscript title
Damping analysis of nonwoven natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites used in
automotive interior parts

All persons who meet authorship criteria are listed as authors, and all authors certify that they
have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content, including
participation in the concept, design, analysis, writing, or revision of the manuscript. Furthermore,
each author certifies that this material or similar material has not been and will not be submitted to
or published in any other publication before its appearance in the journal Polymer Testing.

Authorship contributions
Category 1
Acquisition of data: H. Hadiji, M. Assarar
Analysis and/or interpretation of results: H. Hadiji, M. Assarar, K. Behlouli, B. Zouari

Category 2
Drafting the manuscript: H. Hadiji, M. Assarar, W. Zouari, B. Zouari, R. Ayad

Category 3
Approval of the version of the manuscript to be published: H. Hadiji, M. Assarar, W. Zouari, F.
Pierre, K. Behlouli, B. Zouari, R. Ayad
Acknowledgements
All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (e.g.,
technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support), but who do not meet the criteria
for authorship, are named in the Acknowledgements and have given us their written permission to
be named. If we have not included an Acknowledgement, then that indicates that we have not
received substantial contributions from non-authors.

This statement is signed by all the authors:

Hajer Hadiji May 26, 2020

Mustapha Assarar May 26, 2020

Wajdi Zouari May 26, 2020

1
Floran Pierre May 26, 2020

Karim Behlouli May 26, 2020

Basem Zouari May 26, 2020

Rezak Ayad March 9, 2020 May 26, 2020

2
 Damping analysis of nonwoven natural fibre-reinforced polypropylene
composites used in automotive interior parts
Hajer Hadiji 1,2*, Mustapha Assarar 1, Wajdi Zouari1, Floran Pierre 3, Karim Behlouli 3,

Bassem Zouari 2, Rezak Ayad1

1
University of Reims Champagne Ardenne, ITheMM EA 7548, Reims 51097, France

2
National Engineering School of Sfax, University of Sfax, LA2MP, B. P 1173-3038, Sfax,

Tunisia

3
Eco-technilin SAS, F-76190, Valliquerville, France

*Corresponding author: E mail address: hejer.hadiji@enis.tn

Tel.: +33 3 25 42 46 17

Abstract

The aim of this work is to evaluate the dynamic properties of nonwoven flax, hemp, kenaf and glass

fibre-reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites. Also, the influence of some parameters, such as the

type of reinforcement, the fibre/matrix weight ratio, the fibre orientation and the porosity content, on

the damping behaviour of these nonwoven composites is investigated. To this end, a free flexural

vibrations analysis was conducted to experimentally identify their natural frequencies and their

associated loss factors. The obtained results show that the nonwoven composites reinforced by natural

fibres present higher loss factors compared with those of the glass-PP composite. These interesting

damping properties make these nonwoven composites very attractive for automotive applications

where the dissipation of vibrations is highly requested.

Keywords

Nonwoven; natural fibres; porosity; free vibrations; damping

1
1. Introduction

The use of natural fibres as reinforcement of composite materials has been proven to be an

interesting alternative to synthetic fibres, especially for car interior components in automotive

industry [1–3]. The increasing interest in natural fibres in such applications is motivated by

their various advantages. Indeed, composites based on natural fibres are more recyclable than

those reinforced with glass or carbon fibres. Also, they have a limited impact on the

environment, which could contribute to a healthy ecosystem [4–10]. Moreover, their

lightweight combined with their interesting specific mechanical properties increase their use

in automotive components as an alternative to glass fibres [11–15].

In parallel with the development of eco-friendly composites, there has been an increasing use

of natural fibres as reinforcement in nonwoven composites for automotive interior parts [16–

18]. As a matter of fact, nonwoven products are especially engineered to create structures that

present high specific mechanical properties. Indeed, several studies have shown that

nonwoven composites exhibit good mechanical properties that depend on many parameters

such as their different manufacturing preforms as reported by Martin et al. [19]. Mieck et al.

[20] have studied the effect of fibre content on the tensile characteristics of needle punched

flax-PP nonwoven composites and they have highlighted a strong increase in the tensile

properties with the fibre content. Roussière et al. [21] have been interested in the compressive

and tensile behaviour of nonwoven composites constituted of mats of randomly oriented flax

fibres that reinforce different types of matrix at a fixed fibre content. The authors have shown

that flax-Polylactic acid (PLA) composite presents tensile properties that are equivalent to

those of glass-polyester composite. Furthermore, Merotte et al. [22,23] have highlighted the

interesting acoustical properties of randomly dispersed nonwoven flax-PP composites, that

can be obtained by controlling the porosity content within the composite. The best acoustical

properties have been obtained for a porosity content of 60%.

2
The above-cited works on nonwoven natural fibre-reinforced polymer composites have been

principally interested in the investigation of their mechanical properties. However, the

application of these materials in car interior parts requires better understanding of their

damping properties that show their ability to absorb vibrations and dissipate energy. Indeed,

the damping phenomena is a major factor that needs to be analysed and improved in order to

reduce vibration in structures and avoid fatigue fractures. For this reason, many researchers

have already developed several concepts to identify the dynamic properties of synthetic fibre-

reinforced composite materials [24–26]. For example, in relation with laminated

composites, Sahla et al.[25] have studied the impact of geometric ratio and fibre angle on the

dynamic behaviour of laminated composites using the mathematical model developed by

Draiche et al.[27]. This type of composites has also been studied by Abualnour et al. [28] and

Belbachir et al. [29] in order to investigate its thermomechanical behaviour. Regarding the

high interest of using nanoplates and nanotubes as a reinforcement of polymer composites,

several research works have recently studied their buckling and vibration behaviours by

considering mathematical models [30–34]. For instance, Medani et al.[34] have investigated

the dynamic behaviour of graded carbon nanotube-reinforced porous sandwich plates using a

model based on the First Shear Deformation Theory. Among all the tested parameters, the

authors have founded that the variation of porosity has the greatest influence on the vibration

properties.

For natural fibre-reinforced woven composites, several research works have already

highlighted their good damping properties particularly by using the dynamic mechanical

analysis (DMA) [35–37] or free vibration analyses [38–40]. For example, Duc et al. [35,36]

have compared the dynamic properties of unidirectional and twill flax, carbon and glass fibre-

reinforced composites by using the DMA. Their results have shown that composites based on

flax fibres exhibit higher damping properties than glass and carbon composites [35]. Duc et

3
al. have attributed this difference to the fibre-matrix interphase and the different friction

mechanisms intrinsic to flax fibre yarns such as the intra-cell and inter-cell wall frictions.

Furthermore, these authors have analysed the effect of fibre-matrix adhesion, fibre diameter

and the twist angle of yarns in flax fabrics and have shown their important influence on the

damping properties of the studied woven composites [36]. Similar results have been found by

Wielage et al. [41] who have investigated the dynamic properties of flax, hemp and glass

fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites and have proven that the loss factor of composites

based on flax and hemp fibres is relatively higher than that of glass composite. In addition, the

dynamic behaviour of commingled, sandwich and hybrid composites has been significantly

investigated [38,39,42–45]. For example, Assarar et al. [39] analysed the effect of stacking

sequence on the damping properties of flax-carbon hybrid composites. They have shown a

significant increase in the damping properties of flax-carbon hybrid laminates when the flax

layers are placed outside the carbon laminate. These authors have also suggested some flax-

carbon configurations that can lead to bending stiffness comparable to that of carbon laminate

with enhanced damping properties.

After a literature review, it appears that only few studies have been interested in the damping

properties of nonwoven composites [46,47]. The work proposed by Ni et al. [46] has dealt

with the damping properties of hybrid composites with polyamide nonwoven fabrics. Ni et al.

[46] have shown the loss factor enhancement thanks to the polyamide nonwoven fabrics

without reducing the storage modulus. The second work by Zhang et al. [47] has highlighted

the interesting loss factors of compression moulded nonwoven mats based on bamboo, cotton,

flax and PLA fibres.

This paper proposes a systematical analysis of the damping properties of nonwoven flax,

hemp, kenaf and glass fibre-reinforced polypropylene composites, using free-free flexural

vibration tests. The obtained results were analysed referring to the microstructure of the fibres

4
and the matrix. Furthermore, the effect of the porosity content, fibre orientation and

fibre/matrix weight ratio on the damping properties of these materials was investigated.

Finally, a prediction of the loss factor in term of the porosity content is proposed.

2. Materials

The nonwoven composites studied in this work were supplied by Ecotechnilin SAS in

France and were elaborated from flax, hemp, kenaf, glass and polypropylene commingled

fibres. The flax-PP, hemp-PP, kenaf-PP and glass-PP nonwoven fabrics were manufactured

using the carding/cross lapping/needle punching process at a fibre matrix ratio of 50 % wt

[48]. They are known under the commercial name "FibriPlast 300" and their areal weight is

273 ± 16 g/m2. The plates of nonwoven composites were manufactured by platen press

process: the commingled fabrics were cut under shapes of 210×300 mm2 and placed between

two steel trays to be hot pressed at 11 bar and 200°C. The hot nonwoven fabrics were then

placed between cooled plates and pressed for 1 minute in order to obtain a final thickness of

1.9 mm. Note that the number of plies of each fabric depends on the desired porosity content

of the final composite. Indeed, the thickness of each composite plate was fixed to 1.9 mm and

the number of plies stacked into the mould varies between 2 and 8 plies in order to obtain a

porosity content between 9 % and 64 %. Finally, the composite samples were cut, using a

laser cutting machine, from each composite plate in the Machine Direction (MD) and the

Cross Direction (CD) for the different tests. Table 1 summarizes the different characteristics

of the studied materials.

The porosity content of each composite was determined according to the ASTM D2734-09

standard using the following expression:

1 − wf wf
φ = 1 − ρc ( + ) (Eq. 1)
ρm ρf

5
where w f is the fibre weight ratio and ρ c , ρ m , ρ f are the composite, matrix and fibre

densities, respectively. Note that ρ c is measured from the weight and the volume of each

composite sample.

3. Experimental procedure

The dynamic properties of the nonwoven composite samples were determined using free

flexural vibrations tests with test-specimens of 25 mm wide. Three lengths of these specimens

(230, 250 and 270 mm) were also considered to obtain a variation of the peak frequencies of

the response signals. Each specimen was suspended vertically by two fine rubber wires to

obtain free-free boundary conditions as shown in Figure 1. Next, it was excited manually at

different points using an impulse hammer PCB 086C03. The specimen response was then

detected by an accelerometer PCB 352C23, which measures the acceleration of the transverse

vibrations.

The excitation and the response signals were digitalized by the LMS SCADAS dynamic

analyser that allows displaying the deformed shapes using LMS PolyMax (Polyreference

Modal Analysis eXtended) [49]. Finally, the natural frequencies of each composite sample

and their associated loss factors were derived by fitting the experimental Frequency Response

Functions (FRF) to the PolyMax FRF [49].

4. Results and discussions

4.1. Influence of the reinforcement fibre type

In this section, the damping properties and the bending moduli of glass-PP, kenaf-PP, hemp-

PP and flax-PP nonwoven composites are compared for a fixed porosity content of ~20% and

50% weight of fibre. Figure 2 shows the evolution of their loss factors with the frequency in

the machine and the cross directions. The obtained results firstly show that the loss factor of

the studied nonwoven composites varies slightly with the frequency. A similar evolution of

6
the loss factor has been already found in the case of unidirectional and twill flax-epoxy

composites [39,40,50]. Moreover, it is worthy to note the high damping properties of

nonwoven composites based on natural fibres when compared with those of the glass-PP

composite. Indeed, the loss factor of hemp-PP and flax-PP composites reaches ~5% while it

does not exceed ~2% for the glass-PP composite. To better illustrate the difference between

the dissipative properties of the tested nonwoven composites, Figure 3 shows a comparison

between their loss factors at a fixed frequency of 500 Hz. We remark that those of flax, hemp

and kenaf nonwoven composites are 2 to 2.50 times higher than that of the glass-PP

composite. These relatively high damping properties reflect the capacity of these materials to

absorb vibrations and justify their use in car interior parts instead of nonwoven glass

reinforced composites.

The relatively good dissipative properties of flax-PP, hemp-PP and kenaf-PP composites

shown in Figures 2 and 3 can be essentially explained by the interesting damping properties of

natural fibres as reported in several literature results [35,36,39,50]. In fact, natural fibres have

a form of bundle of unit fibres, which are not perfectly separated and gathered in groups. This

grouping of unit fibres induces friction mechanisms between them, which lead to an energy

dissipation within the fibre creating more damping capacity. This could be supported by the

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) micrographs of glass-PP and hemp-PP composites

presented in Figure 4. These observations highlight the difference of fibre structure between

synthetic and natural fibres. In fact, the presence of groups of elementary fibres in the hemp

fibre architecture induces a high internal friction leading to more dissipation of energy by the

composite. Moreover, the morphology of natural fibres generates a supplementary source of

energy dissipation caused by the friction between the primary and the secondary walls of each

elementary fibre, and between the cellulose microfibrils, the hemicellulose and the lignin of

each wall [51].

7
In order to select the nonwoven composite that presents the best compromise between

bending stiffness and damping, Figure 5 shows a comparison between five properties of the

four tested nonwoven composites in the machine direction: bending modulus, fibre volume

fraction, composite density, loss factor and porosity content. The axes are represented with

the most beneficial values towards the outside of the diagram, which means that, from the five

features, the larger the area built is, the better the composite materials are considered. Note

that the bending moduli of the nonwoven composites were determined based on the natural

frequencies. They were determined by the following expression in the case of free-free

configuration [52]:

λi2 E f h3
wi = , λi = (2i + 1).(π / 2) i = 1,.., 7 (Eq. 2)
L2 12 ρ s

where E f is the bending modulus, L the length, h the thickness and ρ s the surface density of

the nonwoven composite beam. λi is a coefficient for the free-free configuration [38] and i is

the flexural mode number.

The fibre volume fractions of the nonwoven composite samples were determined by the

following expression:

ρc
v f (%) = w f × (Eq. 3)
ρf

where w f is the fibre weight ratio and ρ c and ρ f are the composite and the fibres densities,

respectively.

The radar chart of Figure 5 shows that the change of the fibre type directly affects the selected

features. In fact, at the same fibre weight ratio for all the nonwoven composites, the fibre

volume fraction of glass-PP is clearly lower than those of flax-PP, kenaf-PP and hemp-PP

8
composites which is principally due to the high density of synthetic fibres compared with

natural ones. Moreover, the use of glass fibres enhances the bending modulus of the

composite regarding to the relatively high stiffness of the glass fibre compared with flax,

hemp and kenaf fibres. However, this decreases the glass-PP loss factor because of the lack of

energy dissipation within the synthetic fibre microstructure. Indeed, the loss factors of natural

fibre reinforced nonwovens are significantly higher than that of glass-PP. For the kenaf-PP

composite, its area in the radar chart increases compared with the glass-PP. In addition, the

use of kenaf fibres as reinforcement clearly decreases the loss factor and doesn’t lead to a

significant improvement of the bending modulus compared with hemp or flax reinforced

nonwoven composites. The hemp-PP and flax-PP composites have areas that increase more

significantly than the kenaf-PP and shifts to the downer part of the diagram. This means that

these composites ensure the best damping properties with a low density. Their bending

moduli remain lower than those of glass-PP composite but they can be comparable if we

consider the difference of density between glass and flax or hemp fibres.

Therefore, for applications necessitating high absorption of vibrations and stiffness properties

combined with a low weight, hemp-PP and flax-PP nonwoven composites can be highly

recommended.

Regarding the relatively high use of flax fibres among plant fibres as reinforcement in natural

fibre-reinforced composites [2,5], as well as the interesting damping and stiffness properties

of the flax-PP nonwoven composite, the following studies are only conducted on this material.

4.2 Influence of fibre orientation

The results presented in the latter section show that the loss factor in the machine direction

seems to be slightly higher than that in the cross direction. Consequently, free flexural

vibration tests were conducted on flax-PP nonwoven samples in several directions (0, 30, 45,

60 and 90°) in order to quantify the influence of fabrics orientation on their dynamic

9
properties. Figure 6 depicts the evolution of the loss factor and the natural frequency of flax-

PP with respect to fabrics orientation, for the third and the fifth flexural bending modes. This

figure shows that the flax-PP loss factor and flexural frequency vary very slightly from the

machine (0°) to the cross direction (90°). This slight variation can be explained by the

apparition of a preferred orientation of the nonwoven fabrics during the carding/over-

lapping/needle punching process [48].

4.3 Influence of the fibre/matrix weight ratio

In this section, the influence of fibre content on the loss factors and the flexural frequencies of

the flax-PP nonwoven composite is analysed. To this end, three flax fibre/PP matrix weight

ratios are considered: 30/70, 50/50 and 70/30. This study is conducted at a fixed porosity

content of about 20% as summarized in Table 1. The evolution of the first five natural

frequencies and their associated loss factors with the fibre weight ratio is depicted in Figures 7

and 8, respectively. These results show that the first five flexural frequencies slightly increase

with the flax fibre weight ratio. The slight increase of the 70/30 wt% flax-PP composite

frequency can be related to the higher stiffness and density of flax fibres compared with the

flax-PP composite with 30% of fibre weight ratio. The results of Figure 8 clearly show that

the damping of flax-PP decreases with the flax fibre weight content. For example, this

decrease is about 17.9% to 24.28% when increasing the flax weight ratio from 30 to 70% in

the machine and the cross directions, respectively. In fact, the damping properties of the PP

matrix are higher than those of the flax fibre [35,40] which allows further dissipation of

energy and absorption of vibrations in particular for the flax-PP composite with 30% of fibre

weight ratio. However, the use of flax fibres with high weight ratio (70%) results in a

significant decrease of the loss factor. This could be explained by the decrease of the matrix

contribution in the energy dissipation process of the flax-PP composite. Accordingly, the

decrease in the loss factor when increasing the flax fibre weight ratio firstly indicates that the

10
damping properties of the matrix are superior to those of the flax fibre. Secondly, it shows

that the damping phenomena induced by the polypropylene matrix is predominant compared

to other damping mechanisms such as those related to the friction between flax fibres, the

fibre/matrix interaction and the architecture of flax fibres as discussed in section 4.1.

4.4 Influence of the porosity content

In view of the high porosity content present in nonwoven composites intended for car interior

parts, it is crucial to analyse its contribution in the damping performance of these composites.

To this end, flax-PP composites with five porosity contents (9, 22, 37, 50 and 64%) and fixed

fibre weight ratio of 50% were tested in the machine and the cross directions and the obtained

results are depicted in Figure 9. These results indicate that the loss factor of flax-PP

significantly increases with the porosity content as it reaches approximately 8% for a porosity

content of 64%. In fact, an increase of 611% of the porosity content (from 9 to 64%) enhances

the loss factor by 108.7%.

These interesting damping properties of the flax-PP nonwoven composite are essentially

related to the high damping properties of the nonwoven flax fibres and the polypropylene

matrix, as discussed in sections 4.1 and 4.3, in addition to the morphology of this porous

material. In fact, SEM micrographs of the flax-PP composite cross section at ~7, 32 and 48%

of porosity content, depicted in Figure 10, confirm the presence of voids that are connected to

each other and located at the fibre/matrix interface. These voids increase with the porosity

content and become more and more connected, which explain the relatively high damping

properties obtained for the flax-PP nonwoven composite with a very high porosity content.

Indeed, for ~7% of porosity content (Figure 10.a), the pores are very small and not connected

to each other which contribute to a good fibre/matrix adhesion. At ~32% of porosity content,

the pores are bigger and start to connect to each other leading to a decrease of the quality of

the fibre/matrix adhesion (Figure 10.b). At a higher porosity content of ~48% (Figure 10.c),

11
the voids are found to be more connected to each other which causes a poor impregnation of

some fibres with the matrix [22]. This important discontinuity of the fibre/matrix interface

induces poor adhesion between the reinforcement and the matrix leading to more energy

dissipation within the nonwoven composites with high porosity content.

The obtained loss factors for the five porosity contents in the machine and the cross directions

are shown in Figure 11 at a frequency of 500Hz. These curves can be fitted with the following

second order polynomial equations:

In the machine direction: η (%) = 2, 7.10−4 φ 2 + 5, 22.10−2 φ + 3, 22 R 2 = 0,989 (Eq. 4)

In the cross direction: η (%) = 3,89.10−4 φ 2 + 3,5.10−2 φ + 3,309 R 2 = 0,929 (Eq. 5)

This could help to predict the flax-PP loss factor at a fixed porosity content.

5. Conclusion

Damping properties of four nonwoven composites (flax-PP, hemp-PP, kenaf-PP and glass-PP)

were investigated in this study using free-free flexural vibration tests. The obtained results

showed that nonwoven composites based on hemp, kenaf and flax fibres present more

interesting damping properties than the glass-PP composite. Besides, some material

parameters like the fibre/matrix weight ratio and the porosity content were found to have a

direct impact on the capacity of the flax-PP nonwoven composite to absorb vibrations. In fact,

an increasing of the polypropylene weight ratio within the composite enhances its dissipation

of energy and increases its damping properties. Moreover, an increasing of the porosity

content clearly enhances the flax-PP damping properties. In addition to that, a prediction of

the flax-PP loss factor in term of the porosity content was proposed based on the experimental

results. This could be useful to choose the adequate parameters for the flax-PP nonwoven

12
composite regarding the requested damping performance of a specific automotive interior

part.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the LASMIS research team (Institut

Charles Delaunay, University of Technology of Troyes, France) for using its Optical

Microscope. The authors would also like to thank EcoTechnilin SAS for supplying the

nonwoven materials.

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20
Figure captions:

Figure 1. Experimental equipment.

Figure 2. Evolution of the loss factor with the frequency for a fixed porosity content of ~20%: (a) the
machine direction and (b) the cross direction.
Figure 3. Loss factors of the studied nonwoven materials at a fixed frequency of 500 Hz in (a) the
machine direction and (b) the cross direction.

Figure 4.SEM micrographs of (a) glass-PP and (b) hemp-PP nonwoven composites.

Figure 5. Radar chart according to five selected features of the studied nonwoven composites in the
machine direction.

Figure 6. Evolution of the flax-PP loss factor with the nonwoven fabrics orientation for (a) the third
and (b) the fifth flexural modes.

Figure 7. Evolution of the flax-PP first five flexural frequencies for three fibre/matrix weight ratios:
(a) the machine direction and (b) the cross direction.
Figure 8. Evolution of the flax-PP loss factor for three fibre/matrix weight ratios: (a) the machine
direction and (b) the cross direction.
Figure 9. Evolution of the flax-PP loss factor with the porosity content in (a) the machine direction
and (b) the cross direction.

Figure 10. SEM micrographs of flax-PP composite cross section at (a) ~7%, (b) ~32% and (c) ~48%
of porosity content ((1) disconnected voids and (2) connected voids).

Figure 11. Evolution of the flax-PP loss factor with the porosity content at a fixed frequency of 500 Hz
in the machine and the cross directions (MD and CD).

Table caption:

Table 1. Characteristics of the studied nonwoven composites.

Tables :
Table1

Composite Fibre orientation Fibre/matrix wt (%) Porosity (%)

Glass-PP MD, CD 50/50 23.00±2.30
Kenaf-PP MD, CD 50/50 22.36±2.40
Hemp-PP MD, CD 50/50 19.91±1.69
Flax-PP MD, 30°, 45°, 60°, CD 50/50 22.31±2.01
30/70 22.42±1.29
Flax-PP MD, CD
70/30 23.49±2.23
08.82±1.22
22.31±2.01
Flax-PP MD, CD 50/50 36.53±2.95
50.27±1.81
63.53±1.21
Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Hemp-PP Kenaf-PP Hemp-PP Kenaf-PP

6 Flax-PP Glass-PP 6 Flax-PP Glass-PP

4 4
η(%)
η(%)

2 2

0 0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

(a) (b)

1
 η(%)

0
1
2
3
4
5
6

Figure 4.
Figure 3.

Hemp/PP

Flax/PP

(a)

(a)
Kenaf/PP

Glass/PP

2
η(%)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6

Hemp/PP

Flax/PP
(b)

(b)
Kenaf/PP

Glass/PP
Figure 5.

Figure 6.
8 800 8 1600
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)
7 700 1400
η (%) 7 η (%)
1200
Frequency (Hz)

Frequency (Hz)

6 600 6
1000
η(%)

η(%)

5 500 5 800
600
4 400 4
400
3 300 3
200
2 200 2 0
0°(MD) 30° 45° 60° 90°(CD) 0°(MD) 30° 45° 60° 90°(CD)

(a) (b)

3
Figure 7.
100 100
Fibre weight ratio wt (%)

Fibre weight ratio wt (%)

80 Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode 3 Mode 4 Mode 5 80 Mode 1 Mode 2 Mode 3 Mode 4 Mode 5

60 60

40 40

20 20
0 200 400 600 800 0 200 400 600 800
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

(a) (b)

Figure 8.

6 6

5 5

4 4
η(%)

η(%)

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
30/70 50/50 70/30 30/70 50/50 70/30
Fibre/Matrix wt (%) Fibre/Matrix wt (%)

(a) (b)

4
Figure 9.

10 Φ=64% Φ=37% 10 Φ=64% Φ=37%

Φ=50% Φ=22% Φ=50% Φ=22%
Φ=9% Φ=9%
8 8
η(%)

η(%)
6 6

4 4

2 2

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

(a) (b)

Figure 10.

(a) (b)

(c)

5
Figure 11.
12
Flax-PP in MD
10
Flax-PP in CD

η(%)
6

0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Porosity (%)

6
 Highlights

• A deep characterization of the damping behaviour of nonwoven composites is

proposed

• Natural fibre-reinforced nonwovens exhibit higher damping coefficients than glass/PP

composite

• The porosity content significantly enhances the damping in nonwoven composites

• A prediction of the damping properties in term of the porosity content is proposed

Declaration of interests

☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships
that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.