Effect of Aluminum Surface Treatment on the Damping Properties of Aluminum-Rubber Bonding System

Surface treatments on aluminum substrates are introduced to improve the bonding characteristics between rubber and aluminum components that are widely used in automotive industries. This present work involves the modification of surface roughness of aluminum plates either by sand blasting or anodizing or graphene coating followed by primer coating. Finally, rubber was vulcanized on these surfaces and aluminum-rubber interface were characterized. Sand blasted aluminum surface sample provides the best damping performance with a capacity of 50% damping. Although, aluminum treated with graphene has not been shown better damping properties, aluminum treated with sand blasting and graphene shows equivalent damping performance as that of sand blasted sample with similar average surface roughness (Ra) of 3.2 µm.