Measurement of statistical energy analysis parameters from transient tests

For more than twenty years, statistical energy analysis (SEA) has been used for the analysis of steady-state response distributions in complex coupled structures and sound-structure systems. However, the steady-state SEA formalism is not directly applicable to the analysis of transient vibrations. Hence, transient techniques, popular in many types of dynamical testing have not been used to measure SEA parameters, specifically coupling loss factors. In this paper we show, through experiments that for transient oscillations, energy and total time-integrated energy are equivalent to the power and energy variables of steady-state SEA and are related by the same constant parameters.