Anisotropic Internal Friction Damping

The mechanical damping properties of sheet polaroid material have been studied with a physical pendulum. The polaroid samples were placed under the knife-edges of the pendulum, which was operated in free-decay at a period in the vicinity of 10 s. With the edges oriented parallel to the direction of the long molecular chains in the polaroid, it was found that the damping was more than 10% smaller than when oriented perpendicular to the chains.