Evaluation of the applicability of an energy method to calculate the damping in a lab-scale structure

The aim of this paper is to identify the local energy dissipation in a lab-scale structure by means of the energy flow analysis. In most of the existing approaches the damping is identified either in terms of the modal damping factors or at the material scale. In this paper, an alternative method to these global and material-based approaches by studying the energy flow around a certain part of the structure is proposed.The approach presented in this paper accounts for the energy flow through specific boundaries that surround the structural part of interest. Within this approach, the local energy dissipation can be calculated by isolating specific parts of the structure while taking into account the rest of the structure by means of the energy flux thorough the boundaries. This approach allows to identify both the total energy dissipation and the specific damping operator in the chosen part of the structure.