What is Damping?
- Damping is the dissipation of energy from an oscillator due to resistive forces.
- Damping is generally quite gradually and results in a system slowly slowing down as parts of its energy are dissipated as heat and sound.
Critical Damping
- Critical damping is when an oscillating system quickly returns to its equilibrium position without oscillating.
The above graph shows a displacement to time graph for a critically damped harmonic oscillator (A) and an overdamped harmonic oscillator (B).
The critically damped oscillator returns to its equilibrium at x = 0 in the smallest possible time without overshooting.