Abstract
Optimal design of a piezoelectric smart structure is studied for cabin noise control. A cubic shaped acoustic cavity with a flat plate which covers one side is taken as the problem. The sensor signal is returned to the actuator through a negative gain. The acoustic cavity is modeled using the modal approach which represents the pressure fields in the cavity as a sum of mode shapes of the cavity with unknown coefficients. By using orthogonality of the mode shapes of the cavity, finite element equation for the structure with the influence of the acoustic cavity is derived. The objective function is the average pressure at a certain region, so-called silent zone, in the cavity and the design variables are the locations and sizes of the piezoelectirc actuator and sensor. The optimal design is performed at several frequencies and the results show a remarkable noise reduction. To see the robustness of the optimally designed result, the configuration is used to examine the noise reduction at different frequencies. By adjusting the gain at each frequencies, it is possible to reduce the noise in comparison with the result when the actuator is not activated.