Experimental identification of static and dynamic stiffness of polymeric vibration dampers

Polymeric dampers are frequently used in the automotive field in order to filter engine produced vibrations and thus protecting electronic devices. An accurate knowledge of damper stiffness is therefore important for a proper design of such mechanical filters. Since viscoelastic materials exhibit a significant stiffness–frequency dependency, characterization of dynamic stiffness is required for automotive vibration dampers. In the present paper, a method for broadband identification of the dynamic complex stiffness is described; since the proposed method is reliable at medium and high frequency only (500–1500 Hz), an additional static measurement has been performed. Therefore, the resulting method is a combination of static and dynamic measurements and it does not require specific DMA equipment: all experiments have been carried out using typical vibration testing equipment.