Comparison of Equivalent Viscous Damping and Nonlinear Damping in Discrete and Continuous Vibrating Systems

Abstract

The study of nonlinear damping in vibrations is motivated by the desire to represent and predict real responses more accurately than allowed by the limitations of linear analysis, since observed phenomena are, in general, actually nonlinear in nature. The scope of this paper is to compare the normal engineering methods of including the effects of nonlinear damping to more exact methods of solution so that the range of applicability of the normal methods may be known and the limitations of linear analysis more fully understood.