Weight Minimization of Sandwich Panels with Acoustic and Mechanical Constraints

If a structure is carefully designed to fulfill acoustic as well as strength and stiffness requirements, the amount of additional damping materials can be kept to a minimum. In the present work a method to minimize the mass per unit area of a sandwich panel, taking into account both structural and acoustic requirements is presented. The sound reduction index for airborne sound is used as a constraint and the optimization is performed by mathematical programming methods. As an example a standard solution for sandwich plates is used to define maximum deflection and stresses as structural constraints.