Relaxation of a spring with an attached granular damper

Abstract

The oscillation of a spring may be attenuated by means of a granular damper. In difference to viscous dampers, the amplitude decays nearly linearly in time up to a finite value, from there on it decays much slower. We quantitatively explain the linear decay, which was a long-standing question. © IOP Publishing and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.