Coefficient of kinematic friction from damped oscillatory motion

The advantages of deriving the coefficient of kinematic friction from measurements of the damping of oscillatory motion have recently been described. The measurement of the acceleration rather than displacement has the advantage that, as well as the linear amplitude decay, the acceleration discontinuities due to the friction reversal can be directly observed. The theory of damping due to combined viscous and dry friction is applied to the results in order to derive the coefficient of kinematic friction and identify any velocity dependent contributions to the drag.