  Viscoelasticity plays a key role in many practical applications and in
different reasearch fields, such as in seals, sliding-rolling contacts and
crack propagation. In all these contexts, a proper knowledge of the
viscoelastic modulus is very important. However, the experimental
characterization of the frequency dependent modulus, carried out through
different standard procedures, still presents some complexities, then possible
alternative approaches are desirable. For example, the experimental
investigation of viscoelastic beam dynamics would be challenging, especially
for the intrinsic simplicity of this kind of test. This is why, a deep
understanding of damping mechanisms in viscoelastic beams results to be a quite
important task to better predict their dynamics. With the aim to enlighten
damping properties in such structures, an analytical study of the transversal
vibrations of a viscoelastic beam is presented in this paper. Some
dimensionless parameters are defined, depending on the material properties and
the beam geometry, which enable to shrewdly design the beam dynamics. In this
way, by properly tuning such disclosed parameters, for example the
dimensionless beam length or a chosen material, it is possible to enhance or
suppress some resonant peaks, one at a time or more simultaneously. This is a
remarkable possibility to efficiently control damping in these structures, and
the results presented in this paper may help in elucidating experimental
procedures for the characterization of viscoelastic materials.
