Damping constant in General flexible Beam

Hi.

I'm using the General flexible Beam model given in Simscape Multibody. In which you can define the "Damping constant (beta)" in s.

My problem is that I don't know a damping coeffizient with seconds as the unit. I want to implement results from real life experiments out of which I calculated the logarithmic decrement in s^-1.

So my main question is, what kind of damping coefficient is used in the simscape model as I want to implement my test results?

Thanks and best regards

Answer 1

[Steve Miller]

The logarithmic decrement lets you calculate the damping ratio. That would be easiest to use if you set the damping type to "Uniform Modal" where you can enter the Damping Ratio directly.

The Proportional Damping model needs coefficients to multiply by the K and M terms. Since the damping, C is calculated according to this formula:

[C]=α[M]+β[K],

you need to provide alpha with units of 1/s and beta with units of seconds to yield a damping coefficient of N*s/m or kg/s.

--Steve