Experimental Study on Complex Modes of an End-Damped Continuous Beam

Abstract

The complex modes of an end-damped cantilevered beam are studied as an experimental example of a nonmodally damped continuous system. An eddy-current damper is applied, for its noncontact and linear properties, to the end of the beam, and is then characterized to obtain the effective damping coefficient. The state-variable modal decomposition (SVMD) is applied to extract the modes from the impact responses in the cantilevered beam experiments. Characteristics of the mode shapes and modal damping are examined for various values of the end-damper damping coefficient. The modal frequencies and mode shapes obtained from the experiments have a good consistency with the results of the finite element model. The variation of the modal damping ratio and modal nonsynchronicity with varying end-damper damping coefficient also follow the prediction of the model. Over the range of damping coefficients studied in the experiments, we observe a maximum damping ratio in the lowest underdamped mode, which correlates with the maximum modal nonsynchronicity. Complex orthogonal decomposition (COD) is applied in comparison to the modal identification results obtained from SVMD.