**3. Damping Mechanism—Quality Factor**

The quality factor *Q* is a dimensionless number which describes the energy losses in the system. It can be expressed as the ratio between the energy stored in a cycle of vibration *Estored* and the energy dissipated in a cycle of vibration *Edissipated*

$$Q = 2\pi \frac{E\_{stored}}{E\_{disripated}}\tag{8}$$

There are two main mechanisms where the cantilever can lose energy: through internal energy dissipation, like thermoelastic losses, and external dissipation, like viscous damping, support losses or acoustic losses. The total quality factor consists of quality factors originating from different losses and can be calculated using the following equation:

$$\frac{1}{Q\_{\text{total}}} = \frac{1}{Q\_{\text{viscous}}} + \frac{1}{Q\_{\text{thermro}}} + \frac{1}{Q\_{\text{support}}} + \frac{1}{Q\_{\text{acuastic}}} \tag{9}$$
