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Report Title: Damping

A Technical Report Presented to the Instructors and Assistants of EML 4221C in partial fulfillment of Mechanical Systems Experimental Techniques.

By Lead Author (Name & E-mail): Benjamin Repkay (benripper1289@gmail.com)

Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering University of Central Florida 4000 Central Florida Blvd PO Box 162450 Orlando, FL 32816-2450

Semester and Date: Fall 2013 10/03/13

For Official Use Only:

Abstract The understanding of response effects of damping is crucial in predicting resonant vibrations in structures. Through this experimentation certain aspects of modal parameters are found through differing methods. These methods include half power bandwidth and logarithmic decrement. We find that there are some advantages of the half power method and some discrepancies between the two methods. We found the response of differing striking tips does change depending on the hardness. The harder striking tip on the beam does yielded higher amplitudes in the tip response. The soft hammer tip does add some damping to the system.

Introduction Damping is the act of a drag force or frictional force. Which is also non-conservative, it gradually removes mechanical energy from the system by doing negative work. In this case the negative work is provided by the stiffness of the beam and the foil tape. Through this action, the sinusoidal oscillation will eventually stop. Mathematically, the presence of the damping term in the differential equation for x(t) changes the form of the solution so that it is no longer a simple sinusoidal response. The Modes are used as a simple and efficient means of characterizing this resonant vibration or structure. A structure can be made to vibrate with excessive, sustained, oscillatory motion. Resonant vibration is the response between the inertial and elastic properties of the materials within a structure. Resonant vibration plays a very big role in vibration related problems that occur in structures and operating machinery. To better understand this structural vibration problem, the resonances of a structure need to be identified and quantified. A way of accomplishing this is by defining the structures modal parameters. Experimental Approach

The experiment is setup by clamping a thin beam to a fixed structure and a tip mass to the end of the beam. To record the free response of the system, an accelerometer is attached to the end to record beam tip motion.

Figure 2: Basic Experimental Setup The beam/mass system was configured in several different ways throughout the test. The motion of the beam would be delivered by 3 different methods. The first would be by static deformation or physical bending of the beam. The second is by striking the beam in a soft end tip. The last method was by striking the beam again with a hard tip. Foil tape was also added to the beam in increments of 15 cm for one trial. The following trial had the entire beam length of 62.7 cm on the top and bottom. These excitation responses were read in LabVIEW in a time domain and the FRF. Results/Discussion Modal damping was found for three modal conditions and can be seen in Figures 1,2, and 3. Increasing the mode also increases the complexity of the signal. Figure 1 First Mode Response Figure 2 Second Mode Response

Figure 3 Third Mode Response

The three modal frequencies found exhibited increasingly higher damping with mod using the log decrement method. While the half power bandwidth yielded an increase from mode 1 to 2 but a decrease from 2 to 3. This may suggest some error in is method that could be attributed to the sampling and reading of the values. The half power bandwidth method found substantially different modal frequencies, by as much as 6 orders of magnitude. These method discrepancies can be seen in Table 1. Table 1: Modal Frequency and Damping of 3 Modes
Log Decrement Method w1 x1 w2 x2 w3 x3 19.12 0.00784 67.56 0.02217 151.04 0.02054 Half Power Bandwidth Method 3.10 0.05806 19.25 0.05844 54.00 0.05787

It was found that adding foil tape does help to dampen the system. First was a 15 cm sample of foil tape followed by lining the entire beam length of 62.7 cm on the top and bottom with foil. All three amplitudes were reduced by 5.56%, 4.68%, and 7.5% respectively. It was expected that the increase in tape would linearly reduce the amplitude as the modes increased but the data from Table 2 proved otherwise. Increasing the foil also shifts the modal frequencies to the right. The modal shifts can be seen in Table 3. Table 2: Amp/Modal Freq. Top foil
wn1 A1 wn2 A2 wn3 A3 3.1 36 19.4 49.2 53.7 60

Table 3: Amp/Modal Freq. Top and Bottom Foil

wn1 A1 wn2 A2 wn3 A3 3.1 34 19.5 47 54.8 55.5

The last part of the experiment included two different striking tips on the hammer. As expected, the soft tip did add to the damping of the system. The damping caused by the tip reduced the amplitude of the 3 modes by 2.86%, 6%, and 5.29% respectively.

Table 4: Amp/Modal Freq. Hard Tip

wn1 A1 wn2 A2 wn3 A3 3.1 35 19.32 50 53.9 58.6

Table 5: Amp/Modal Freq. Soft Tip

wn1 A1 wn2 A2 wn3 A3 3.1 34 19.5 47 54.8 55.5

Conclusion It can be concluded that increasing the mode also increases the relative damping of the system due to the increased motion allows the beam/foil tape to remove more mechanical energy from the system. The half power bandwidth method was more easily found by the FRF magnitude plot as opposed the reading of multiple points on the graph. The lesser of data points decrease the chance of error and thereby it is advantageous to use the half power method. Increasing the amount of foil of tape effectively stiffens the beam in terms of the damping effects found. The effects of the hammer tips was as predicted, the hard tip provided the higher of the two amplitudes. While on the other hand, the softer tip absorbed some of the mechanical energy by the deformation of the hammer tip adding to the damping of the system. It is also important to note that the striking placement of the hammer was important. Practice trials were performed to strike the beam in the correct placement depending on the modes desired to maximize modal response. References
1. University of Central Florida. "MCF Equipment." Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center at UCF. University of Central Florida, 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2013