7. Conclusion

This dossier presented several aspects of viscoelastic materials, which are used in all sectors of engineering and mechanical systems. When integrated into systems, these materials dissipate the vibratory energy of structures into heat and, as a result, reduce the amplitude of vibration of these structures, thus helping to increase their service life. They are also used to attenuate acoustic emissions.

We began by describing the main properties of these materials, namely stiffness (real part of the Young's modulus) and damping (imaginary part of the modulus or loss factor), giving the basic rheological models used to characterize them.

We then presented the so-called "master curves" for selecting a viscoelastic material for a given application. These give access to the material's characteristics (stiffness, damping) over the frequency and...