In this paper the authors present experimental confirmation of the feasibility of a new approach to the estimation of the four damping coefficients associated with a squeeze-film vibration isolator. The design and construction of the experimental facility is described in detail. A time-domain filtering algorithm is applied to process the displacement responses to single-frequency excitation and thus extract information on the linearized dynamics of the squeeze-film. The estimated coefficients are validated by comparing performance predictions with those obtained from spectrum analysis and from short-bearing theory. The significance of the results is discussed and suggestions are made for further work in this area.
