Optimisation of the damping properties of steel structures using adhesively bonded joints

Adhesives offer both good damping properties and very high strengths. The possibilities for using the positive damping properties in particular to optimise dynamically stressed steel structures have rarely been explored to date. In this paper, comprehensive numerical and experimental investigations are presented. In numerical investigations on dynamically loaded, representative steel structures, the potential for damping of structures by adhesively bonded joints is analysed. Numerical investigations show that the vibration amplitudes of adhesively bonded structures are more than 95 % lower than those of welded reference structures in the relevant resonance case. Based on this, the damping properties of adhesively bonded tubular steel joints in a scale relevant for construction industry were experimentally investigated. Different geometry and test boundary conditions are investigated in a parameter study. The loss factor of tubular joints is a maximum of 0.38, which is relevant for steel construction. Based on the results of experimental investiga‐tions, a methodology is presented for the analytic determination of the damp‐ing properties of adhesively bonded tubular joints for various specimen ge‐ometries and stress boundary conditions. For this purpose, dimensional anal‐ysis is carried out using the Buckingham Pi Theorem.