OPTIMIZATION METHODS FOR PASSIVE DAMPER PLACEMENT AND TUNING

The effectiveness of viscous elements in introducing damping in a stru cture is a function of several variables including their number, their location in the structure, and their physical properties. This paper addresses the questions of the placement of these elements and the sel ection of their physical parameters via optimization techniques. The p aper investigates various metrics to define these optimization problem s and compares the damping profiles that are obtained. Both discrete a nd continuous optimization problems are formulated and solved correspo nding, respectively, to the problems of placement of damping elements and to the tuning of their parameters. Particular emphasis is placed o n techniques to make feasible the large-scale problems resulting from the optimization formulations. Numerical results involving a lightly d amped testbed structure are presented.