Damping evaluation on eco-friendly sandwich panels through reverberation time (RT60) measurements

Problems involving vibrations occur in many fields of engineering. Thus, it is necessary to increase the knowledge of the damping, offered by new structural configurations and materials in order to reduce the vibration levels. The present paper focuses its attention on the measurements of the structural loss factor of different types of sandwich panels made of eco-friendly materials. The interest in natural materials, for structural applications, has considerably increased in the last years thanks to the growing environmental concerns. The influence on the loss factor of face sheet materials, core types and configurations is experimentally evaluated by means of measurements of the reverberation time (RT 60). The reported data represent a good initial database for more detailed analyses of these new materials.