Experimental evaluation of the damping properties of beams and thin-walled structures made of polymeric materials

In the field of structural vibrations, an appropriate rheological model should be accurate in fitting the experimental data on a wide interval of frequencies by means of a minimum number of parameters and, in particular, it should be able to reproduce the experimentally found behavior of the damping ratio ζ n as a function of the natural angular frequency ω n. In this study a non-integer order differential linear rheological model is considered, discussing its effectiveness in solving the above mentioned problem. This model, refferred to as the Fractional Double Kelvin model, combines the properties of both the Fractional Kelvin and Fractional Zener models, which are considered to be very effective in describing the viscoelastic dynamic behavior of mechanical structures made of polymers. An identification method of general validity for viscoelastic models is adopted, based on the concept of equivalent damping ratio and on the circle-fit technique. It is applied to the analysis of vibrating beams and plates of different sizes, made of polymeric materials such as Polyethylene, Polyvinyl-chloride and Delrin.