Technical Paper
Exploring Oberst Beam Standard Method for Viscoelastic Materials to Increase Test Confidence and Applicability
2017-11-07
2017-36-0179
Damping treatments can be employed to mitigate vibration levels of structures near a specific resonance frequency. In the automotive area, constrained-layer dampers are the most employed, consisting on a viscoelastic layer bonded to a metallic-restrictor layer and to the structure itself subsequently. The damper’s frequency performance is strongly dependent upon the temperature of operation, which means that there is a need to characterize this relation in order to choose the best damping material, thus optimizing the application. In this paper, a laboratory test procedure known as the Oberst Beam Method was employed to characterize the frequency and temperature behavior of a commonly used damper. The test, which involves the Frequency Response Function measurement of a system composed by the damper applied to a standardized beam, followed a SAE procedure. An auxiliary CAE model was also developed and compared to physical test results.