MEASUREMENT OF THE VISCOELASTIC PROPERTIES OF DAMPING MATERIALS: ADAPTATION OF THE WAVE PROPAGATION METHOD TO TEST SAMPLES OF SHORT LENGTH

Wave propagation methods allow the deduction of the viscoelastic damping properties of materials from the waveform pattern of a transitory wave: the wave profile is recorded at two travel distances in a thin bar made of the medium studied. In the case of linear viscoelasticity, the characteristics of the material are deduced directly from the transfer function of the two pulses measured. From a theoretical point of view, these methods are of great interest as they bridge a gap between vibratory methods and ultrasonic methods, allowing results to be obtained in a frequency range covering one and a half to two decades in the audiometric range (20 Hz–20 kHz). However, they have not been used much in industrial applications due to the difficulty and cost involved in producing samples in the form of bars. This study shows how this type of method can be adapted to measuring the viscoelastic properties of damping materials using reduced size and common shaped samples such as end-stop buffers.