A particle-based thrust damping system is presented which considers a piston oscillating in a dry particle medium to dissipate energy through friction and inelastic collisions. An experimental setup is designed to evaluate the influence of particle properties and device parameters on damping performance. Particle properties such as size (15 nm-3 mm), mass and temperature (20-130 °C) are evaluated in addition to device parameters such as container size and the piston's start position. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of this new particle damping method and provide insights that may be useful in the development of future particle damping technologies.