Rayleigh's Classical Damping Revisited

Adhikari, S. and Phani, A. Srikanth
International Conference on Civil Engineering in the New Millennium: Opportunities and Challenges, Howrah, India, 2007.

Proportional damping is {a widely used} approach to model dissipative forces in complex engineering structures and it has been used in various dynamic problems for more than ten decades. A major limitation of the mass and stiffness proportional damping approximation is the lack of generality of the model to allow for experimentally observed variation of damping factors with respect to vibration frequency in complex structures. To remedy this, a new generalized proportional damping model is proposed. The proposed method requires only the measurements of natural frequencies and modal damping factors which can be obtained using a point measurement of the frequency response function (FRF). Simulation examples are provided to illustrate the proposed method. Verification of the proposed technique in lab scale experiments is presented. It is concluded that the present method has significant potential in modelling damping in industrial scale structures.

BiBTeX Entry
@INPROCEEDINGS{cp27,
    AUTHOR={S. Adhikari and S. A. Phani},
    TITLE={Rayleigh's classical damping revisited},
    BOOKTITLE={International Conference on Civil Engineering in the New Millennium: Opportunities and Challenges},
    YEAR={2007},
    Address={Howrah, India},
    Month={January},
    Publisher={}
}
by Sondipon Adhikari