SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARACTERIZATION OF STRUCTURAL DAMPING

This paper deals with the characterization of damping in dynamical structural systems. In particular, the problem of how the modal damping ratios change with different boundary conditions is addressed. It is shown that only Rayleigh-type damping is actually independent of boundary conditions and modal damping ratios can be easily converted from one boundary condition to another. This condition applies independently to continuous, discrete and discretized systems.