< Back to previous page

Publication

Robustness assessment and optimization of a simplified smart structure model for structural acoustic control

Book Contribution - Book Chapter Conference Contribution

In the past 20 years, fundamental research has been conducted on intelligent materials towards developing smart structures. This has raised industrial interest for the application of smart structures to many problems found in civil life. Among those, noise is gaining an increased attention as it is one of the environmental pressures that most closely affects the EU citizens, as confirmed by public surveys on overall nuisance and health problems. Therefore, intelligent materials have started to be used to reduce noise and vibration in civil structures, machine tools, automobiles, trains, and aerospace systems. The integration of intelligent materials is also seen as key to lightweight design, which is one of the main solutions for reducing vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. In this paper, a simplified model for a structural acoustic control system is applied to a vibro-acoustic analysis model resembling a concrete car structure. This is a simplified car cavity with the cabin dimensions of a typical station wagon car; it has a firewall between the engine compartment and the interior cavity. In this paper, forces are applied to the firewall to control the noise generated by the engine and transmitted through the vibration of the firewall to the passenger compartment. The intensities of the forces are optimized in order to minimize the noise around the driver's head position. Since variability exists in any physical system (manufacturing tolerances, load definition, geometric properties ...), for the present analysis, the variability in input forces direction and intensity, in engine noise level and in firewall thickness has been taken into account and modeled. The robustness of the vibro-acoustic system response to the variability has been first assessed at the deterministic optimal configuration. The system parameters have then been optimized to improve the robustness of the design. The simplified model offers the possibility to demonstrate a methodology that can be applied to more complex systems with multiple sensors and actuators, or more complex model representations thereof, for the integrated control systems and the system-level applications.
Book: Proceedings of the Leuven Symposium on Applied Mechanics in Engineering
Pages: 617 - 628
Number of pages: 12
ISBN:978-90-73802-85-8
Publication year:2008
BOF-keylabel:yes
IOF-keylabel:yes
Authors from:Higher Education