Impact of viscoelastic damping properties on vibration response of scale models

Abstract

There are many industries that utilized scale models to test the behavior of systems before building full-size structures, such as aircraft, spacecraft, and marine vehicle design. While vibration and acoustic response may not be the only quantities of interest when testing scale models, scale models can be utilized to predict full-scale acoustic behavior. When damping treatments are to be applied to full-scale systems, there will also be a need to apply these treatments to the scale models. Typically, these damping treatments use viscoelastic materials due to their high loss factor. However, since the stiffness and loss factor of viscoelastic materials change significantly with frequency, viscoelastic damping treatments will not behave consistently between model- and full-scale. This work shows the impact of using the same viscoelastic damping treatment on scale models as designed for full-scale systems. As a test case, a model of a thin vibrating plate will have a constrained layer damper applied on one surface. The total surface velocity response of a full-scale and model-scale finite element plate with a viscoelastic constrained layer damper is compared. Methods of designing viscoelastic materials for scale-models will also be presented. There are many industries that utilized scale models to test the behavior of systems before building full-size structures, such as aircraft, spacecraft, and marine vehicle design. While vibration and acoustic response may not be the only quantities of interest when testing scale models, scale models can be utilized to predict full-scale acoustic behavior. When damping treatments are to be applied to full-scale systems, there will also be a need to apply these treatments to the scale models. Typically, these damping treatments use viscoelastic materials due to their high loss factor. However, since the stiffness and loss factor of viscoelastic materials change significantly with frequency, viscoelastic damping treatments will not behave consistently between model- and full-scale. This work shows the impact of using the same viscoelastic damping treatment on scale models as designed for full-scale systems. As a test case, a model of a thin vibrating plate will have a constrained layer damper applied on one...