Abstract

Experimental and Computational Studies of the Piano Hammer

A.Stulov (Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn Technical University, Tallinn, Estonia)

e-mail: stulov@ioc.ee

This presentation is focused on the experimental study of piano hammers. A special high precision device has been developed in order to provide the dynamical testing of piano hammers. The experimental arrangement makes it possible to obtain the force and compression histories of the hammer-string interaction. The hammer parameters were found by using the nonlinear hysteretic (hereditary) model of piano hammer [A.Stulov, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 2577-2585 (1995)]. It has been shown that physical assumptions about the history-dependent properties of the hammer felt are confirmed by the experiments, and the hysteretic type of the force-compression characteristics is obtained without any problems. It is confirmed that the piano hammer possesses the history-dependent properties or, in other words, is made of a material with memory. In addition, the dependence of the slope of the force-compression characteristics of the hammer on the rate of loading is evident. Moreover, this dependence is the same as that predicted by the nonlinear hysteretic model of piano hammer.

Section : 3