Creep and Mechanical Oscillator Damping

Abstract

Although "friction" is included in many models of oscillator damping, including viscous ones applied to the pendulum; they "miss the mark" with regard to a conceptual understanding of the mechanisms responsible for energy loss. The theory of the present paper corrects some of these misunderstandings by considering the influence of internal friction which derives from the structural members of the oscillator through secondary rather than primary creep. The simple model properly describes the variation of Q with frequency.