<title>Vibration control of cylindrical shells using active constrained layer damping</title>

Abstract

The fundamentals of controlling the structural vibration of cylindrical shells treated with active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatments are presented. The effectiveness of the ACLD treatments in enhancing the damping characteristics of thin cylindrical shells is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. A finite element model (FEM) is developed to describe the dynamic interaction between the shells and the ACLD treatments. The FEM is used to predict the natural frequencies and the modal loss factors of shells which are partially treated with patches of the ACLD treatments. The predictions of the FEM are validated experimentally using stainless steel cylinders which are 20.32 cm in diameter, 30.4 cm in length and 0.05 cm in thickness. The cylinders are treated with ACLD patches of different configurations in order to target single or multi-modes of lobar vibrations. The ACLD patches used are made of DYAD 606 visco-elastic layer which is sandwiched between two layers of PVDF piezo-electric films. Vibration attenuations of 85% are obtained with maximum control voltage of 40 volts. Such attenuations are attributed to the effectiveness of the ACLD treatment in increasing the modal damping ratios by about a factor of four over those of conventional passive constrained layer damping (PCLD) treatments. The obtained results suggest the potential of the ACLD treatments in controlling the vibration of cylindrical shells which constitute the major building block of many critical structures such as cabins of aircrafts, hulls of submarines and bodies of rockets and missiles.