A compact active structural acoustic control method for minimizing radiated sound power

Active structural acoustic control is an active control method that controls a vibrating structure in a manner that reduces the sound power radiated from the structure. Such methods focus on attenuating some metric that results in attenuated sound power, while not necessarily minimizing the structural vibration. The work reported here outlines the weighted sum of spatial gradients (WSSG) control metric as a method to attenuate structural radiation. The WSSG method utilizes a compact error sensor that is able to measure the acceleration and the acceleration gradients at the sensor location. These vibration signals are combined into the WSSG metric in a manner that is closely related to the radiated sound power, such that minimizing the WSSG also results in a minimization of the sound power. The connection between WSSG and acoustic radiation modes will be highlighted. Computational and experimental results for both flat plates and cylindrical shells will be presented, indicating that the WSSG method can achieve near optimal attenuation of the radiated sound power with a minimum number of sensors.