Measuring damping using Abaqus and viscoelastic material

Your approach should work. I recommend that you make sure your FE mesh is refined enough, and that your material model dissipates energy at the strain levels and frequencies you are applying.

/Jorgen

Thanks, Jorgen!

How do I make sure that the material model dissipates energy at the strain levels and frequencies I am applying?

I would create a single load-unload cycle with the appropriate strain rate (based on your eigenfrequency or known loading rate), and then simulate the stress-strain response for the selected material model. This can be done super fast using MCalibration.

If the load-unload cycle in stress-strain space contains some amount of hysteresis then your material model will clearly dissipate energy.

/Jorgen

Thank you Jorgen, this is very helpful. 

I have another question about defining viscoelasticity: how do I get the normalized shear modulus if I have relaxation test data and want to define gR(t) in Abaqus?