Metaconcrete: An Experimental Study on the Impact of the Core-Coating Inclusions on Mechanical Vibration.

Resonance vibration of structures is an unpleasant incident that can be conventionally avoided by using a Tuned Mass Damper (TMD). The scope of this paper contains the utilization of engineered inclusions in concrete as damping aggregates to suppress resonance vibration similar to a TMD. The inclusions are composed of a stainless-steel core with a spherical shape coated with silicone. This configuration has been the subject of several studies and it is best known as Metaconcrete. This paper presents the procedure of a free vibration test conducted with two small-scaled concrete beams. The beams exhibited a higher damping ratio after the core-coating element was secured to them. Subsequently, two meso-models of small-scaled beams were created: one representing conventional concrete and the other representing concrete with the core-coating inclusions. The frequency response curves of the models were obtained. The change in the response peak verified the ability of the inclusions to suppress the resonance vibration. This study concludes that the core-coating inclusions can be utilized in concrete as damping aggregates.

A New Efficient Approach to Simulate Material Damping in Metals by Modeling Thermoelastic Coupling.

The realistic prediction of material damping is crucial in the design and dynamic simulation of many components in mechanical engineering. Material damping in metals occurs mainly due to the thermoelastic effect. This paper presents a new approach for implementing thermoelastic damping into finite element simulations, which provides an alternative to computationally intensive, fully coupled thermoelastic simulations. A significantly better agreement between simulation results and experimental data was achieved, when compared with the empirical damping values found in the literature. The method is based on the calculation of the generated heat within a vibration cycle. The temperature distribution is determined by the mechanical eigenmodes and the energy converted into heat, and thus dissipated, is calculated. This algorithm leads to modal damping coefficients that can then be used in subsequent analyses of dynamically excited oscillations. The results were validated with experimental data obtained from vibration tests. In order to measure material damping only, a test setup excluding friction and environmental influences was developed. Furthermore, comparisons with fully coupled thermoelastic simulations were performed. It was clear that the new approach achieved results comparable to those of a computationally expensive, coupled simulation with regard to the loss factors and frequency response analyses.