Validation of estimated isotropic viscoelastic material properties and vibration response prediction

This paper is concerned with finite element (FE) prediction of forced vibrations using a linear viscoelastic constitutive vibration damping modelling technique. A combined numerical and experimental investigation was performed on two bonded aluminium-PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) plates with different geometry. Three-dimensional FE models were established using experimentally estimated PMMA material properties (elastic and damping) from previously published procedures. The viscoelastic material damping parameters are here validated from the perspective of accurate estimation of constitutive material properties. Vibration responses were predicted from the FE models and measured on the two composite plate structures at a large number of points. Comparisons between the numerical FE simulations and corresponding measured responses show that the estimated material damping properties used as input to the computations are very accurate and may be treated as independent of the geometry and boundary conditions of the plate structures, i.e., as constitutive damping parameters.