An experimental technique for evaluating viscoelastic damping using ultrasonic guided waves

•Investigating an innovative approach to determine the damping property of a viscoelastic coating using ultrasonic Lamb wave in a metal-polymer waveguide.•Dropping amplitude signals as well as changing the phase of Lamb wave when travels through the coated waveguide.•Exploiting the obtained damping property in FEM software, ABAQUS.•Reducing computational cost and time by taking advantage of the experiment-based fitting method.•Verification of amplitude ratio as well as group velocity dispersion curves related to the FEM simulation by experimental results with an error of less than 1%.•Confirming the excitability of piezo discs in a range of frequency with tangible precision.