Sound Transmission Loss of Adaptive Sandwich Panels Treated With MR Fluid Core Layer

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the sound transmission loss (STL) capability of sandwich panels treated with Magnetorheological (MR) fluids at low frequencies. An experimental setup has been designed to investigate the effect of the intensity of the applied magnetic field on the natural frequencies and STL of a clamped circular plate. A multilayered uniform circular panel comprising two elastic face sheets and MR fluid core layer is fabricated. It is shown that as the applied magnetic field increases, the fundamental natural frequency of the MR sandwich panel increases. Moreover, the STL of the panel at the resonance frequency considerably increases under applied magnetic field. Furthermore, an analytical model for the STL of the finite multilayered panels with MR core layer is developed and compared with the experimental measurements. The MR core layer is treated as a viscoelastic material with complex shear modulus. It is shown that good agreement exists between the analytical and experimental results. Parametric study has also been conducted to investigate the effect of face sheets and core layers’ thickness.