Vibration sources identification in coupled thin plates through an inverse energy method

This paper addresses the problem of vibration sources identification in coupled thin plates at high frequency range. An energy-based method called Simplified Energy Method (MES) is used for that purpose. It was initially developed to predict the distribution of structural energy density in mid- and high frequency ranges regarding injected power. This paper extends this energy method to solve inverse structural problems to identify vibration sources acting on coupled structural subelements. Thanks to this inverse formulation, the forces in a structure are obtained from the energy density data. Numerical simulations were performed to test the validity of the present formulation using different positions of external forces and measurement points. Numerical as well as experimental results show that the inverse MES (IMES) method has an excellent performance in estimating the input forces applied to a complex structure modeled with a set of assembled plates from the density energy measurements.