Critical Damping in Multi-Modal Resonant System

[dimensionless]

Let's say I have a system with multiple oscillatory modes. Is it possible to have anything in this system that resembles critical damping?

 

[Bob S]

Let's say I have a system with multiple oscillatory modes. Is it possible to have anything in this system that resembles critical damping?

If you had two separate series resonant circuits in parallel, each resonant circuit could be separately critically damped. Give me some numbers and I will run a SPICE analysis.
Bob S

 

[dimensionless]

If they are in parallel, would they still be coupled? I'm great with circuits. I'm picturing some kind of physics system like a chain of masses and springs.

 

[thrillhouse86]

Its an excellent question - supposing you had 2 masses coupled together in series by a spring and a damper - could you look for cases where the system has only one eigenvalue repeated 4 times ?

Even if you could get that situation, to be honest I'm not sure if it would even represent multimodal critical damping ...

Regards,
Thrillhouse