The Effects of Cure Schedule on Water-Based LASD Loss Factor and Implications for Prototype Testing

Liquid applied sound deadener (LASD) is a light-weight, targeted vibration damping treatment traditionally used in the automotive market for body-in-white (BIW) panels. Water-based LASDs may cure over a wide range of conditions from room temperature to over 200°C. However, curing conditions commonly affect change in the damping characteristics. A thorough understanding of the relationship between curing conditions and subsequent damping performances will inform the material selection process and may allow pre-manufacturing designs to be adjusted with limited impact during validation. This paper aims to strengthen the quantitative understanding of the role LASD curing conditions have on damping performance by observing the effects of variations in thickness and cure temperature as measured by the Oberst method. Additionally, this paper proposes a simple approach to using LASD treatments of equivalent damping loss factor to approximate heat-cure LASD performance with room temperature-cure LASD.