A comparative study on optimization of constrained layer damping treatment for structural vibration control

This paper presents a comparison of optimization algorithms for constrained layer damping (CLD) patches’ layout with an objective to minimize the maximum vibration response of the odd modes, which constitutes the dominant acoustic radiation, of a simply supported beam excited by a harmonic transverse force. An analytical model developed for relating the displacement response of the beam with bonded CLD patches and their layout is adopted to formulate the optimization problem. Four different nonlinear optimization methods/algorithms, sub-problem approximation method, the first-order method, sequential quadratic programming (SQP) and genetic algorithm (GA), are then, respectively, used to optimize the CLD patches’ locations and lengths with the aim of minimum displacement amplitude at the middle beam. The efficiency of each considered optimization method is evaluated and also compared in terms of obtained optimal beam displacement and the added weight owing to damping treatment. The results show that GA is most efficient in obtaining the best optimum for this optimization problem in spite of highest computation efforts required to improve its stability.