What is the Sorbothane Engineering Design Guide?

How can the Sorbothane Engineering Design Guide help engineers? This guide was developed to provide engineers with a practical, hands-on approach for designing components and products using Sorbothane® material. The guide provides detailed information about using Sorbothane material for shock and vibration solutions.

About the Guide

It’s important to note that the guide is advisory only, and it is the responsibility of the user to verify the results. In addition, the guide does not take into account any buckling or casting limitations of the material. The data used in this manual – is supported by empirical work. For additional technical and engineering support,  you may contact Sorbothane at [email protected] with any questions.

In addition to our design guide, we offer a Windows-based program Design Guide Application, which parallels the calculation method and can be downloaded here.

How Sorbothane Works

Sorbothane is a polyether-based polyurethane. It is formulated for enhanced viscoelastic properties. Sorbothane is consistently effective over a wide temperature range (-29 to + 71 degrees Celsius).

Because Sorbothane is a non-Newtonian material, stress is not proportional to strain and mechanical energy is “lost” by conversion to heat. Sorbothane’s response to a load is highly dependent on the rate of force application (frequency dependent responses). Sorbothane is highly damped which makes it particularly desirable for difficult applications, which require operation near or at resonant frequencies.

Sorbothane is available as custom-molded parts, select standard shapes and in sheet stock in a variety of thickness and sizes. Parts can be specified in durometers ranging from 30 to 80 on the Shore 00 scale. The most effective static deflection for Sorbothane with a shape factor between 0.3 and 1.0 is in the range of 10-20%.