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CLD Tiles

CLD Tile is just a slightly catchy name for 6” X 10” pieces of constrained layer damper – what we’ve traditionally called sound deadener. If you’ve been doing any research, you have probably come across the usual arguments: “Buy the good stuff and cover everything” or “Buy the cheap stuff and cover everything with multiple layers.

The usual arguments miss the point. Products like this are vibration dampers. Their only purpose is to control resonance in a vehicle’s panels. Controlling resonance is the absolutely critical first step in any sound deadening project, but more isn’t better and trying to use a CLD to block sound is too expensive, too labor intensive and makes it unnecessarily difficult to do future vehicle maintenance. The old adage about using the right tool for the job has never been truer.

Some of you know that I have been testing and writing about products like these for more than four years. Here’s what I’ve learned in a nutshell: To control panel resonance you should use the best vibration damper you can find and only treat the 25% at the center of the panel. You won’t have to worry about asphalt melting or falling off and you won’t get black goo from cheap butyl compounds on your living room carpet. You will spend less, the project will be easier and the results will be better.

With this in mind, I set out to create the best constrained layer damper I could. The first step was to develop the adhesive/damping layer. Two years of testing and tweaking went into this phase. I wanted maximum effectiveness and durability as well as solid performance over the widest temperature range possible. I also wanted extreme heat tolerance – in case you need to subject it to that sort of torture and because heat tolerance is a very good predictor of stability over time.

Once I was satisfied with the adhesive I started to test aluminum constraining layers. The best theoretical constraining layer is the same as the material you are trying to damp. For most vehicles, that would be something like 22 gauge steel and completely impractical. Still, because my goal was to be able to get the job done with smaller pieces, I was able to settle on 8 mil aluminum as the best compromise. You can cut it if you need to, but since you will seldom have to, you get the benefits of a thicker and stronger material. You don’t have to worry about being able to press it into irregular surfaces or bend it into corners because those areas don’t need to be treated since their shape already makes them resistant to resonance.

Listen - undamped.wav	Listen - damped.wav

Time for a demonstration. This is a 12 inch square of 22 gauge steel suspended by the top corner and struck in the center of the side facing away from the camera with a xylophone mallet. The piece on the left has no vibration damper applied and the piece on the right has a 6 inch square applied to the center (25% coverage). You can see the measurement microphone jutting in to the photos from the left. Play the two sound files and tell me there is any point in adding more vibration damper.