New laboratory tests are presented for the experimental evaluation and assessment of the piezoceramic shunted damping (PSD) concept for cantilever Aluminium thin (long) beams bonded symmetrically on their upper/lower surfaces with single pairs of small piezoceramic patches. Following these tests outcome, the PSD efficiency measure is proposed to be the so-called modal effective electromechanical coupling coefficient, which is post-processed from free-vibrations analyses under short-circuit and open-circuit electrodes of the patches. For this purpose, the tests are numerically modelled, analysed, and correlated using ABAQUS® commercial finite element (FE) code. Good tests/models correlations were reached after FE models electromechanical updating. This is attributed to the refined FE models in the sense that they have considered realistic and desirable features such as, electrodes equipotentiality, piezoceramic patches poling orientations (same/opposite), and the corresponding (parallel/series) electric wiring (connections).
