Noise reduction using smart panel with shunt circuit

Piezoelectric smart panels featuring shunt damping are designed and tested for broadband noise reduction. Electrical admittance is introduced to represent electromechanical coupling of piezoelectric structures. Admittance is used to predict the performance of piezoelectric shunt damping. The location, size, and rotational angle of piezoceramic patches on the host panel are optimized by taking the admittance as a cost function and by using the Taguchi method. The admittance is calculated by finite element method in the design stage and experimentally verified after the optimal configuration is found. Shunt performance of the smart panel is realized by vibration reduction in frequency domain. To illuminate the effect of noise reduction in the shunt system, a standard test setup according to SAE J1400 is used to measure the transmission loss and sound pressure distribution for the smart panel. In this paper, a broadband shunt technique for increasing transmission loss is experimentally investigated.