Prediction and Measurement of the Vibration and Acoustic Radiation of Panels Subjected to Acoustic Loading

Interior noise and sonic fatigue are important issues in the development and design of advanced subsonic and supersonic aircraft. Conventional aircraft typically employ passive treatments, such as constrained layer damping and acoustic absorption materials, to reduce the structural response and resulting acoustic levels in the aircraft interior. These techniques require signi cant addition of mass and only attenuate relatively high frequency noise transmitted through the fuselage. Although structural acoustic coupling is in general very important in the study of aircraft fuselage interior noise, analysis of noise transmission through a panel supported in an in nite rigid ba e (separating two semi{in nite acoustic domains) can be useful in evaluating the e ects of active/adaptive materials, complex loading, etc. Recent work has been aimed at developing adaptive and/or active methods of controlling the structural acoustic response of panels to reduce the transmitted noise1. A nite element formulation was recently developed to study the dynamic response of shape memory alloy (SMA) hybrid composite panels (conventional composite panel with embedded SMA bers) subject to combined acoustic and thermal loads2. Further analysis has been performed to predict the fareld acoustic radiation using the nite element dynamic panel response prediction. The purpose of the present work is to validate the panel vibration and acoustic radiation prediction methods with baseline experimental results obtained from an isotropic panel, without the e ect of SMA.