Damping Determination by Half-Power Bandwidth Method for a Slightly Damped Rectangular Steel Plate in the Mid-Frequency Range

Abstract

This paper presents a novel methodology for measuring the Damping Loss Factor (DLF) of a slightly damped plate in the mid-frequency range (400-1000 Hz) by the Half Power Bandwidth Method (HPBM). A steel flat plate of 650 x 550 x 2 mm was considered as the test case, which was excited by both a shaker and an impact hammer to quantify the effect of the excitation type for slightly damped plate. Since the HPBM is based on extracting the damping data from the modal resonance peaks, working with the correct Frequency Response Functions (FRF) was found to be a crucial factor. Therefore, the effects of coherence and resolution of the sampling frequency were examined in detail in the measurements. The obtained DLF results were statistically analysed and then applied in SEA simulations. Comparison of the simulation and experimental results showed that the method of extracting the DLF data from the measurements can have as much as 10 dB influence on the simulation results. The best results, with only 2 dB difference between measurement and simulation, were obtained when the statistical expected value of the data was used as the input in the SEA simulations.