Abstract:

The internal friction (loss tangent) of solids is normally measured, as a function of temperature, with a torsion pendulum operating in free decay. Curves of the internal friction and the oscillation frequency, against temperature, are obtained at various moments of inertia, to extract the parameters characteristic of the relaxation process (relaxation time and strength). In all these experiments only the temperature is considered as an independent variable and the moment of inertia of the pendulum is mainly used to shift the internal friction peaks in the temperature scale. It is pointed out in the paper that the moment of inertia is also an independent variable which can be used to determine, with high accuracy, if the measured peak is of the Debye type or not. A new torsion pendulum, with continuously variable moment of inertia is presented, which allows measurements of the partial derivative of the internal friction and the oscillation frequency with respect to the moment of inertia, at constant temperature. Finally, some measurements of the Snoek relaxation in Nb-O alloys are presented, to show the applicability of the concepts developed in the paper. © 1992 Società Italiana di Fisica.