Re: Al Extrusion Vibration Damping

Alex, thanks for the tips on using water. I'm not real strong in the
chemestry area so I need all the help I can get :).

Hmm, so adding water won't help damping? Filling the tube with
anything that can dissipate vibrations will help. If you fill the
tube with steel, the vibration amplitude goes down, but it'll still
ring for a long, long time. Filling with concrete increases the
damping by a HUGE amount and also stregthens the structure, but it's
impossible to remove. The internal forces caused by vibration affect
all materials, but some release the energy as heat while others
(steel, aluminum) just give the energy back and things get ugly. I
still haven't seen anyone give the damping characteristics of
different fluids. I would think the viscosity of the fluid would be
the deciding factor but this is just my thinking...I haven't found any
real data on this. I believe a mass damper was mentioned, but this
must take a detailed analysis of the structure to work properly so I
think using a fill material is the only way to go. Any other ideas??