| This thesis presents observations made on flexural wave propagation in a damped impacted plate. With health and safety regulations getting more important, noise reduction in the workplace is becoming an increasing concern. Vac Damp, is a damping pad mounted on the impacted plate and held on by a vacuum pump. This pad reduces the noise generated by the plate's vibration by absorbing part of the propagating waves' energy. During riveting operations, two Vac Damps are applied to the impacted surface, on each side of the point of impact.; In an effort to improve the efficiency of the use of damping pads, it is important to understand how they affect the vibration of the impacted plate. In order to do that, it is necessary to be able to observe how waves, particularly flexural waves, propagate through simple plates and damped plates.; First, experimental testing was conducted on real samples in a laboratory setting.; Experimental results showed how flexural waves travel through the impacted plate and are reflected when they reach the discontinuities created by the damping pads. The results also show how the pads affect the wave speed and how they contribute to reducing the transverse vibrations' amplitude.; Numerical results first showed that the models were behaving in a way resembling reality. Those results also showed the effects of varying the physical parameters of the systems' components. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
