A procedure is outlined for determining the optimal design of friction dampers for high-speed turbomachinery blading. The procedure includes: An integration of bench test results with finite-element analysis and a single-mode blade model to ensure accuracy of the analytical model and improve reliability of the friction damper design; an extension of the single-mode blade model to predict the engine behavior of friction dampers; and a new way of viewing analytical and experimental results in terms of a damper performance curve to determine optimal design parameters, when the levels of excitation and damping in the system are unknown. Unique experiments are performed on a test disk in order to demonstrate and verify the accuracy of the design procedure.