Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 22, 2026

Simulation of Human-induced Vibrations Based on the Characterized In-field Pedestrian Behavior
Published on: April 13, 2016
Characterization of a self-damped pendulum for vibration isolation
Aodren Vallat1, Yoav Naveh1, John Winterflood1
1ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Department of Physics, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
Abstract:
In many sensitive measurement systems such as gravitational wave detectors, multistage low-loss vacuum-compatible suspension chains are required to effectively isolate the test mass from seismic disturbances. These chains usually have high quality factor normal modes which require damping. A technique termed "self-damping" in which the motion of orthogonal modes of the same stage mass is deliberately viscously cross-coupled to each other-thereby damping both modes-was engineered into the suspension chains used in an 80 m suspended high-power optical cavity. In this report, we investigate in detail the performance of a single stage of these chains. We model the system using numerical simulation and compare this with experimental measurements with different damping parameters in order to optimize the self-damping obtained using this technique.
Related Concept Videos
Physical Pendulum
When dealing with complicated systems, the mass moment of inertia is an important parameter, as it...
Simple Pendulum
The period of a simple pendulum depends on two factors: its length and the acceleration due to gravity. The period is completely independent of any other factors, such as mass or maximum displacement. For small displacements, a pendulum is...
Torsional Pendulum
As long as the rigid body's angular displacement is small, its oscillation can be modeled as a linear angular oscillation. The amplitude of the oscillation is an angle. The role of mass is played...
Magnetic Damping
If, however, the bob is a slotted metal plate, the magnet produces a much smaller effect. When a slotted metal plate enters the field, an emf is induced by the change in flux; however, it is less effective because the slots limit the...
Damped Oscillations
Although friction and other non-conservative...
Types of Damping

