Some pitfalls of simplified modeling for viscoelastic sandwich beams

It is commonplace in academia to base models of constrained-layer damping treatments on the assumption that the facesheets displace identically during transverse vibrations. This assumption is valid for a large range of problems, particularly for problems common in the era when damping was achieved by applying foil-backed treatments to thin panels. The authors show using a very simple example that oversimplified modeling can skew distributions of modal strain energy, a common indicator of damping. [S0739-3717(00)00204-X].