Active damping of geometrically nonlinear vibrations of smart composite shells using elliptical smart constrained layer damping treatment with fractional derivative viscoelastic layer

In this article, the performance of elliptical smart constrained layer damping treatments on active damping of geometrically nonlinear vibrations of doubly curved smart laminated composite shells is analyzed. The constraining layers of the smart constrained layer damping treatments comprised vertically/obliquely reinforced 1–3 piezoelectric composites, while the constrained layers of isotropic viscoelastic materials are modeled using the three-dimensional fractional order derivative model. A mesh-free model of the smart composite shells is developed for analyzing their nonlinear transient responses within the framework of a layerwise shear and normal deformation theory considering the von Kármán–type geometric nonlinearity. Thin, doubly curved laminated composite shells integrated with elliptical/rectangular smart constrained layer damping patches with different stacking sequences and boundary conditions are considered for presenting the numerical results. The numerical analyses demonstrate the higher effectiveness of the elliptical smart constrained layer damping treatments over the rectangular ones in attenuating the nonlinear vibrations of laminated composite shells.