Predicting folded beam waveguide absorber behavior using full translational and rotational degree of freedom coupling

Abstract

Folded beam waveguide absorbers (WGAs) have been shown to be effective low-frequency damping devices. Early WGA studies were unable to accurately predict this damping behavior. These studies used only translational degrees of freedom (DOFs), which resulted in the underestimation of the WGA damping performance. A recent study [Munro and Hambric, ‘‘Modeling folded beam waveguide absorber behavior using translational and rotational degree of freedom frequency response function coupling,’’ Proc. NOISE-CON 2003] used translational and rotational DOF frequency response functions to predict folded beam WGA behavior when attached to a thick rectangular plate, where the plate and WGA rotational DOFs were estimated using the finite-differencing method. Each plate and WGA DOF was coupled independently using frequency domain substructure synthesis (FDSS) [Jetmundsen et al., ‘‘Generalized frequency domain synthesis,’’ J. Am. Helicopter Soc. 55–64, Jan (1988)], and the damping contributions due to each DOF were summed to give the total WGA damping prediction. This method gives a much improved damping estimate from previous methods but is inefficient for complex problems. In this study, all the DOFs for the plate and WGA are combined simultaneously using FDSS to predict the WGA damping behavior and plate response with folded beam WGAs attached.