Comparative Analysis of Viscous Damping Model and Hysteretic Damping Model

A damping model is one of the key factors in dynamic analysis. Viscous damping and hysteretic damping models are commonly used in structural damping models. In this study, transient and steady responses are analyzed for a single degree of freedom system based on the two damping models. The attenuation coefficient and damped natural frequency are important parameters of the transient response. In addition, the vibration amplitude is an important parameter of the steady response. When the relative errors of the parameters for the two damping models are less than 10%, the threshold of the damping ratio is selected as 0.1736 and the threshold of the loss factor is 0.3472. The numerical examples show that the dynamic responses based on the viscous damping model are approximately equal to those based on the hysteretic damping model in small damping cases. With the increase in the damping ratio, the difference between the dynamic responses calculated by the two damping models gradually increases. In large damping cases, the two damping models must be distinguished, and the choice of the damping model depends on the characteristic of dissipate energy.