Secondary actuation and error sensing for active acoustic structure

A typical approach to active control of sound radiation or transmission from vibrating structures involves active structural acoustic control (ASAC) and active noise control (ANC), which introduce respectively force input and compacted sound source to apply on or be close to the vibrating structure. However, for the ASAC approach, arrangement for secondary force and error sensor is heavily dependent upon the properties of the primary structure and acoustical space; for the ANC approach, a large number of compacted secondary sources are required. Hence, in this paper, based on distributed secondary sound source and near-field error sensor, active acoustic structure is proposed to construct adaptive or smart structure as a versatile module or element for controlling sound radiation or transmission at low frequencies. First, a theoretical model based on a minimization of the total sound radiation from the primary and secondary panel is established, after which, taking into consideration the relationship between the vibration modes pattern and sound radiation characteristics for secondary panels, optimal arrangement for the secondary panels is examined in detail. Finally, a near-field pressure-based error sensing approach is presented, based on two kinds of object function, and active control of sound radiation is performed.