Active Vibration Control of an Aircraft Cabin Panel Using Piezoelectric Sensors and Actuators

In this paper, the active vibration suppression of an aircraft cabin panel embedded with piezoelectric sensors and actuators under sinusoidal or random excitation is studied experimentally. The Independent Modal Space Control (IMSC) approach is employed in the controller design. The piezoelectric sensors and actuators associated with the IMSC technique have been applied to the active vibration control of the aircraft panel, and shown to be effective in vibration control. A second order controller is selected in the control scheme to suppress the fundamental modal vibration response of the aircraft cabin panel. The mode shapes of the panel are experimentally obtained, and used as the parameters of the objective functions for minimizing the unwanted vibration responses by appropriately selecting the sensor and actuator gains. Based on the experimental results, it is found that the vibration levels of the open and closed loop systems differ by up to 5.0 dB (for sinusoidal excitation) and 7.4 dB (for random excitation), even when the control circuit is interfered by electrical and magnetic noises.