An Analysis of Viscoelastic Damping Characteristics of a Simply-Supported Sandwich Beam

An energy method is employed to analyze the damping in the fundamental mode of a simply-supported sandwich beam with viscoelastic core material sandwiched between two elastic metallic layers called the facings. The theory developed herein enables one to predict the damped natural frequency and the damping (in terms of logarithmic decrement) of the transverse vibration of a beam of known dimensions, provided the moduli-frequency characteristics of the core material are known. Experimental measurements bear out the accuracy of the theoretical predictions. The theory can very easily be extended for the analysis of higher discrete modes.