Synthesis and control of active constrained layers with enhanced boundary actions

In this paper, a new active constrained layer (ACL) configuration is proposed to improve the active action transmissibility of the current ACL treatment. Introducing edge elements, the active action from the piezoelectric cover sheet can be transmitted to the host structure more directly. On the other hand, such a configuration still has the passive damping ability from the viscoelastic layer. In other words, it has the benefits of both the current ACL and a purely- active system. Analysis results indicate that the proposed new approach can suppress vibration effectively, and it can achieve better performance with less control efforts as compared to systems with purely-active or current ACL treatments.