Vibration control of curved panel using smart damping

Damping designs with active piezoelectric materials and passive viscoelastic materials combine the advantages of both active and passive constrained layer damping (ACLD/PCLD) treatments. Present study is aimed to examine through experiments, vibration control of curved panel treated with optimally placed active or passive constrained layer damping patches. Placement strategies of constrained layer patches are devised using the modal strain energy method. The optimum location for the application of ACLD/PCLD patches are found for specific modes and the information for different modes is then collated to get the best locations for control of multiple modes. The treatments are then applied to the elements target specific modes of vibrations as well as for control of multiple modes. Extensive experiments are conducted by using number of samples of ACLD and PCLD patches for each configuration to control different modes simultaneously or independently. The results demonstrate the utility of the technique for selecting the locations of the ACLD treatments to achieve desired damping characteristics over a broad frequency range. Experiment results well corroborates with theoretical predictions. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.