PASSIVE VIBRATION CONTROL VIA UNUSUAL GEOMETRIES - THE APPLICATION OF GENETIC ALGORITHM OPTIMIZATION TO STRUCTURAL DESIGN

In the majority of aerospace structures, vibration transmission problems are dealt with by the application of heavy, viscoelastic damping materials. More recently, interest has focussed on using active vibration control methods to reduce noise transmission. This paper examines a third, and potentially much cheaper method: that of redesigning the load bearing structure so that it has intrinsic, passive noise filtration characteristics. It shows that very significant, broadband noise isolation characteristics (of around 60 dB over a 100 Hz band) can be achieved without compromising other aspects of the design. Here, the genetic algorithm (GA), which is one of a number of recently developed evolutionary computing methods, is employed to produce the desired designs. The problem is set up as one in multi-dimensional optimization where the geometric parameters of the design are the free variables and the band averaged noise transmission the objective function. The problem is then constrained by the need to maintain structural integrity. Set out in this way, even a simple structural problem has many tens of variables; a real structure would have many hundreds. Consequently, the optimization domain is very time consuming for traditional methods to deal with. This is where modern evolutionary techniques become so useful: their convergence rates are typically less rapidly worsened by increases in the number of variables than those of more traditional methods. Even so, they must be used with some care to gain the best results. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited