A MODIFIED MSE METHOD FOR VISCOELASTIC SYSTEMS - A WEIGHTED STIFFNESSMATRIX APPROACH

The conventional Modal Strain Energy method (MSE is briefly discussed. Several indices are proposed to characterize a viscoelastically dampe d system. An Overall Error Index is proposed to assess the accuracy of the solution. A Modified MSE method is developed for a better evaluat ion of modal damping. Instead of neglecting the damping stiffness matr ix in the determination of the eigenvectors, as is the case in the con ventional MSE method the authors used a weighted matrix to solve a rea l eigenvalue problem. With such modification the estimation of the mod al damping is often improved. Numerical simulation of multi degree-of- freedom systems are reported using the proposed Modified MSE method an d the indices.