Prediction of the Low-Pass Filtering Characteristics of Viscoelastic Polymer Plates

Understanding the vibration-absorbing behavior of polymers is critical to diverse vibration damping applications. There is, however, still much uncertainty about the mechanophysical factors and pathways associated with polymer damping. This leads to the need for characterization and, by extension, prediction of the vibration transfer characteristics of polymers. Here, we present a systematic method for estimating the low-pass filtering characteristics of viscoelastic polymer plates by combining the fractional derivative standard linear solid (FDSLS) model for describing the frequency-dependent dynamic modulus of polymers measured by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), one-phase exponential growth function for expressing the shape factor dependence of the dynamic modulus, and harmonic base excitation in a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) damped system. For polysulfide rubber (PSR), silicone rubber (SR), and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) of different thicknesses, a series of vibration tests are conducted to evaluate the accuracy of our method in estimating their low-pass filtering characteristics, focusing on the following points: the dependence of cut-off frequency on the thickness of viscoelastic polymer plates, on the number of through-holes created in the plates, and on the mass mounted on the plates. The proposed method accurately estimates the low-pass filtering characteristics (i.e., displacement transmissibility and cut-off frequency) of viscoelastic polymer plates with acceptable and non-significant error. The findings will improve the understanding of solid polymer mechanics and support the progress of vibration protection for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices using viscoelastic polymer plates.