On the Error Bound of the Approximate Solution of a Nonclassically Damped Linear System under Periodic Excitations

One common procedure in the approximate solution of a nonclassically damped linear system is to neglect the off-diagonal elements of the normalized damping matrix. A tight error bound, which can be computed with relative ease, is given for this method of solution. The role that modal coupling plays in the control of error is clarified. If the normalized damping matrix is strongly diagonally dominant, it is shown that adequate frequency separation is not necessary to ensure small errors.