Single fibre damping: insight, advances and challenges

This review paper provides insights into damping characterisation at the fibre scale. With the growing demand for composite materials, understanding damping behaviour within these materials is becoming increasingly crucial. However, research on damping characterisation at this scale remains limited, highlighting a notable gap in the field. This paper presents a detailed analysis of methodologies used to assess fibre-scale damping and examines the influence of environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and pressure, as well as the impact of the identification method. While most studies have focused on ceramic and metallic fibres, some efforts have also been made to investigate natural fibres. However, these studies remain relatively scarce, and the characterisation of natural fibre damping is still in its early stages. Reported damping values vary significantly across studies, reflecting both the influence of fibre type and methodological differences. For instance, damping values for cotton fibres range from 13.7% to 21.7%, carbon fibres from 0.09% to 0.9%, and flax fibres from 3.6% to 11.5%. Moreover, a noticeable contrast can be observed between organic and inorganic fibres. One of the main findings of this review is the significant variation in damping values obtained for the same fibre type, depending on the characterisation method used. This highlights the need for standardisation and further refinement of experimental techniques to improve the reliability and comparability of damping measurements.