The study of damping property and mechanism of thermoplastic polyurethane/phenolic resin through a combined experiment and molecular dynamics simulation

In this paper, the damping property of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) was firstly regulated by introducing the phenolic resin (PR) with more active hydroxyl group and larger molecular weight. The mechanism of enhanced damping property was systematically elucidated through the combination of molecular dynamic (MD) simulation and experimental methods. The MD simulation results showed the hydrogen bonds (H-bonds), binding energy, and fractional free volume (FFV) in the quantitative way. When the PR content increased to 40%, it had the largest number of H-bonds, highest binding energy, and relative small FFV. Meanwhile, the experimental results showed that there indeed existed H-bonds interaction between PR and TPU polymer chains. Furthermore, the glass transition temperature (Tg) as well as the loss factor (tan δ) was remarkably improved with increasing the PR content, the effective damping temperature range was broadened, the peak position was also moved to room temperature. This study can provide some reference for designing high-performance TPU-based damping materials.