Characterisation of the damping behaviour of an adhesive-bonded GFRP trailer

The presented investigations concentrate on the characterisation of the damping behaviour of pultruded sections and an application-near structure adhesive-bonded from them using the example of a vehicle trailer. In this respect, attention firstly focused on the selection of a suitable adhesive which should not only provide the best possible damping behaviour but also simultaneously meets the requirements on the strength and the temperature resistance for structures in vehicle construction. The utilised role model was a commercial car trailer which used a steel/aluminium construction method and whose structural elements were initially replaced by pultruded GFRP sections before the overall structure was converted into a design appropriate for adhesive bonding. First of all, the damping was characterised on a specimen scale on pultruded sections and adhesive-bonded structural elements in order to develop models for adhesive-bonded joints within FEM and MBS. Finally, the damping of the application-near structure was investigated on a test bench setup developed specifically for this purpose.