VIBRATION CONTROL THROUGH PASSIVE CONSTRAINED LAYER DAMPING AND ACTIVE CONTROL

To add damping to systems, viscoelastic materials (VEM) are added to s tructures. In order to enhance the damping effects of the VEM, a const raining layer is attached, creating a passive constrained layer dampin g (PCLD) treatment. When this constraining layer is an active element, the treatment is called active constrained layer damping (ACLD). Rece ntly, the investigation of ACLD treatments has shown it to be an effec tive method of vibration suppression. In this paper, the treatment of a beam with a separate active and PCLD element will be investigated. T wo new hybrid variations will be introduced. A Ritz-Galerkin approach is used to obtain discretized equations of motion. The damping is mode led using the Golla-Hughes-McTavish (GHM) method and the system is ana lyzed in the time domain. By optimizing on the performance and control effort for both the active and passive case, it will be shown that hy brid treatment is capable of lower control effort with more inherent d amping, and is therefore a better approach to suppressing vibration th an ACLD.