Active control of sound transmission using structural modal filters

This paper addresses active sound transmission control based on structural sensors and actuators. The proposed methodology is to independently measure and control the targeted structural modes, which significantly contribute to sound transmission, with structural modal filters, i.e., modal sensors and modal actuators. The targeting is performed by using modal sound transmission coefficients before control as the criteria. The modal sound transmission coefficient enables the contribution from a structural mode to the sound transmission via the modal interaction with the other structural modes to be determined. The structural modal filters effectively facilitate decreasing the sound transmission and guarantee that the structural vibration and near-field sound, side effects of sound transmission control, will not increase. It is shown with numerical examples that sound transmission can be reduced significantly in a broad frequency band by controlling a small number of structural modes and neither the structural vibration nor near-field sound are increased.