Piezoelectric Smart Panels for Broadband Noise Reduction

This article presents the noise reduction performance of piezoelectric smart panels featuring piezoelectric shunt damping. A piezoelectric smart panel is a plate structure on which a piezoelectric patch with an electrical shunt circuit is attached. When an incidence sound is impinged on the panel structure, the structure vibrates and the attached piezoelectric patch produces electrical energy, which is effectively dissipated as heat via an electrical shunt circuit. Since the energy dissipation strongly depends on the vibration mode of the panel structure, many patches are required for multiple vibration modes. Instead of using multiple piezoelectric patches, a single piezoelectric patch is used in conjunction with blocked shunt circuit for multimode shunt damping. Modeling, shunt parameter tuning, and implementation of the blocked shunt circuit on the panels are explained.