# Measuring Stiffness & Spring Damping Coefficient of Hard Rigid Material Objects

I have a set of objects made out of mostly stiff materials and what I want to do is to find out the stiffness and spring damping coefficients of those objects. I need to find out the values geometrically instead of the material stiffness(it must account for small shape properties like curves, sharp corners etc., but not more than one of such features per test subject). I have a feeling that some sort of powerful compression device that measures the force it's applying together with some measurement devices for displacement would help me doing those measures, but I'm not quite sure how exactly would I do it. Thus I'm asking for some suggestions of how to measure this.

Note. I'm looking for the values used in the damped spring formula based on Hooke's law:
$$F_\mathrm{spring} = kx + cv$$
Where
$$v = \frac{\delta x}{\delta t}$$

• Tell us roughly how big the objects are (photos or drawings would help), what they are made of, and what size of forces, displacements, and velocities you want to measure. Then somebody might be able to answer without just guessing. – alephzero Dec 20 '16 at 1:17
• The objects have dimensions of approximately xxx where x = 5-25 cm. They have varying shapes. They're made out of materials such as aluminium, plastic, leather, plastic and metallic composites, steel and otthers. And I already mentioned that I want to measure a property of those objects(geometric stiffness which is dependant on stiffness and geometry of the objects). – Adrians Netlis Dec 20 '16 at 18:57