Lesson 2. Free Vibrations With Viscous Damping

LESSON 2.
FREE VIBRATIONS WITH VISCOUS DAMPING

Viscous damping force is a formulation of the damping phenomena, in which the source of
damping force is modelled as a function of the volume, shape, and velocity of an object traversing
through a real fluid with viscosity.
Typical examples of viscous damping in mechanical systems include:
 Fluid films between surfaces

 Fluid flow around a piston in a cylinder
 Fluid flow through an orifice
 Fluid flow within a journal bearing
Viscous damping also refers to damping devices. Most often they damp motion by providing a
force or torque opposing motion proportional to the velocity. This may be effected by fluid flow
or motion of magnetic structures. The intended effect is to improve the damping ratio.
 Shock absorbers in cars

 Seismic retrofitting with viscous dampers
 Tuned Mass Dampers in tall buildings
 Deployment actuators in spacecraft
Viscous damping is damping that is
proportional to the velocity of the system. That
is, the faster the mass is moving, the more
damping force is resisting that motion. Fluids
like air or water generate viscous drag forces.
We will only consider linear viscous dampers,

that is where the damping force is linearly
proportional to velocity. The equation for the
force or moment produced by the damper, in
either x or θ, is:
Where c is the damping constant, which is a

physical property of the damper (based on type
of fluid, size of piston, etc.). Note that the units
of c change depending on whether it is damps
Fig 2.21. A diagram showing the basic
linear (N-s/m) or rotational motion (N-m
mechanism in a viscous damper. As the system
s/rad).
(mass) attached to the loop at the top vibrates
up and down, the damper will resist motion in
both directions due to the piston passing
through the fluid.
Fig 2.22. Free-body diagram of the system in equilibrium position. The spring is at its
equilibrium position, but it is stretched and does produce a force.
When the system is at rest in the equilibrium position, the damper produced no force on the system
(no velocity), while the spring can produce force on the system, such as in the hanging mass shown
above. Recall that this is the equilibrium position, but the spring is NOT at its unstretched length,
as the static mass produces an extension of the spring.
Fig 2.23. Free-body diagram of the system in equilibrium position. The spring is at its
equilibrium position but it is stretched and does produce a force.
If we perturb the system (applying an initial displacement, or an initial velocity, or both), the
system will tend to move back to its equilibrium position. What that movement looks like will
depend on the system parameters (m, c, and k).
Fig 2.24. Free-body diagram of the system in a perturbed position. Since the spring is at its
equilibrium position (neither stretched or unstretched ). It does not produce a force.
To determine the equation of motion of the system, we draw a free-body diagram of the system
with perturbation and apply Newton's second law.
Fig 2.26. Free-body diagram of the system with perturbation.
The process for finding the equation of motion of the system is again:
1. Sketch the system with a small positive perturbation (x or θ).
2. Draw the free-body diagram of the perturbed system. Ensure that the spring force and the
damper force have directions opposing the perturbation.
3. Find the one equation of motion for the system in the perturbed coordinate using Newton's
Second Law. Keep the same positive direction for position, and assign positive
acceleration in the same direction.
4. Move all terms of the equation to one side, and check that all terms are positive. If all
terms are not positive, there is an error in the direction of displacement, acceleration,
and/or spring or damper force.
For the example system above, with mass m, spring constant k and damping constant c, we derive
the following:
This gives us a differential equation that describes the motion of the system. We can rewrite it in
normal form:
As before, the term ωn is called the angular natural frequency of the system, and has units
of rads/s.
ζ (zeta) is called the damping ratio. It is a dimensionless term that indicates the level of damping,
and therefore the type of motion of the damped system.
The expression for critical damping comes from the solution of the differential equation. The
solution to the system differential equation is of the form:
Where a is a constant, and the value(s) of r can be obtained by differentiating this general form of
the solution and substituting into the equation of motion.
Because the exponential term is never zero, we can divide both sides by that term and get:
Using the quadratic formula, we can find the roots of the equation:
Critical damping occurs when the term under the square root sign equals zero:
Four Viscous Damping Cases

There are four basic cases for the damping ratio. For the solutions that follow in each case,
we will assume that the initial perturbation displacement of the system is x0 and the initial
perturbation velocity of the system is v0
1. ζ = 0: Undamped
c=0 c=0
This is the case covered in the previous section. Undamped systems oscillate about the equilibrium
position continuously, unless some other force is applied.
Fig 2.27. Response of an undamped system
2. ζ > 1: Overdamped
Roots are both real and negative, but not equal to each other. Overdamped systems move slowly
toward equilibrium without oscillating.
Fig 2.28. Response of an overdamped system
The solution for an overdamped system is:
Where:
3. ζ = 1: Critically-damped.
Roots are real and both equal to -ωn. Critically-damped systems will allow the fastest return to
equilibrium without oscillation.
Fig 2.29. Response of a critically damped system

The solution for a critically-damped system is:
Where:
4. ζ < 1: Underdamped.
The roots are complex numbers. Underdamped systems do oscillate around the equilibrium point.
Unlike undamped systems, the amplitude of the oscillations diminishes until the system eventually
stops moving at the equilibrium position.
Fig 2.30. Response of an underdamped system
The solution for an underdamped system is:

Where:
ωd is called the damped natural frequency of the system. It is always less than ωn:
The period of the underdamped response differs from the undamped response as well.
Undamped:
Underdamped:
Comparison of Viscous Damping Cases
Fig 2.31. Responses for all four types of system (or values of damping ratio) in viscous damping.
All four system have the same mass and spring values and have been given the same initial
perturbations (initial position and initial velocity: this is apparent because they start at the same
y-intercept and have the same slope at x=0)
In figure 2.31, we can see that the critically-damped response results in the system returning to
equilibrium the fastest. Also, we can see that the underdamped system amplitude is quite attenuated
compared to the undamped case.
REFERENCES
Graham K.(2000). Fundamentals of Mechanical Vibration (Second edition). Singapore:
McGraw-Hill Bok Co.
Hu J.(2020). Numerical Study of Coulomb and Viscous Damping. Retrieved from

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/341702/Numerical%20study%20of%2
0Coulomb%20and%20viscos%20damping.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
Rao S.(n.d). Mechanical Vibration.(sixth edition). Retrieved from

http://web.eng.fiu.edu/LEVY/images/EML3222/Mechanical%20Vibration%20CH%2
02%20Free%20vibration%20of%20SDOF%20System%20(1).pdf

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LESSON 2.

FREE VIBRATIONS WITH VISCOUS DAMPING

 Fluid films between surfaces

 Shock absorbers in cars

We will only consider linear viscous dampers,

Where c is the damping constant, which is a

1. Sketch the system with a small positive perturbation (x or θ).

Four Viscous Damping Cases

Fig 2.28. Response of an overdamped system

The solution for an overdamped system is:

Fig 2.29. Response of a critically damped system

Fig 2.30. Response of an underdamped system

The solution for an underdamped system is:

Comparison of Viscous Damping Cases

Hu J.(2020). Numerical Study of Coulomb and Viscous Damping. Retrieved from

Rao S.(n.d). Mechanical Vibration.(sixth edition). Retrieved from

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