Optimal location of active piezoelectric sensors and actuators for noise reduction in composite sandwich panels

This paper addresses the issue of vibration and noise reduction in laminated sandwich plates using both passive and active elements. A finite element implementation of a laminated sandwich plate with viscoelastic core and surface bonded piezoelectric patches is used to obtain the frequency response of the panels. The sound transmission characteristics of the panels are evaluated by computing their radiated sound power and sound transmission loss, using the Rayleigh integral method. A negative velocity feedback control law has been used to implement the active damping. The optimal location of the surface co-located pairs of piezoelectric patches is then obtained, using Direct MultiSearch (DMS) optimization to minimize added weight, number of controllers and noise radiation. Trade-off Pareto optimal fronts and the respective optimal active patch configurations are obtained.