Electromechanical Test Rig for Characterisation of Viscoelastic Material

Viscoelastic materials are widely used for passive damping of undesired vibrations. The characteristics of this kind of materials cannot be obtained theoretically; however, experimental modeling should be performed. In this paper, a test rig is developed in order to characterize the viscoelastic material experimentally. Moreover, a particular kind of material is used to test the validity of the new device. Unlike the devices in the previous works, the torque here is not measured directly using a torque transducer which is quite expensive. However, in this test rig a current sensor is used for measuring the current, thereafter the torque is calculated indirectly. Furthermore, the operating frequency of this device is relatively higher than the other devices used for the same purpose. The results showed the validity of the device at characterizing the viscoelastic material.