Development of a system for measuring structural damping coefficients

In this paper, a new system was described using a microphone as a vibration sensor and a personal computer for signal processing to solve above-mentioned problem. Compared with the conventional system which utilizes a laser doppler vibrometer and FFT analyzer, the new system is only about 1/10 the cost of conventional system, almost the same measurement accuracy was obtained, and measuring time was reduced to less than 1/10 that of the conventional system. Agreement was obtained in regard to tendencies of the structural damping coefficients in light of the chemical properties of the samples and the measurement results. Thus, this new measurement system using a microphone and personal computer is effective for simple and accurate measurement of structural damping coefficients. The effectiveness of the system was verified by measuring several types of glass samples.