Discrete material optimization of vibrating laminated composite plates for minimum sound radiation

This paper deals with vibro-acoustic optimization of laminated composite plates. The vibration of the laminated plate is excited by time-harmonic external mechanical loading with prescribed frequency and amplitude, and the design objective is to minimize the total sound power radiated from the surface of the laminated plate to the surrounding acoustic medium. Instead of solving the Helmholtz equation for evaluation of the sound power, advantage is taken of the fact that the surface of the laminated plate is flat, which implies that Rayleigh's integral approximation can be used to evaluate the sound power radiated from the surface of the plate. The novel Discrete Material Optimization (DMO) formulation has been applied to achieve the design optimization of fiber angles, stacking sequence and selection of material for laminated composite plates. Several numerical examples are presented in order to illustrate this approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.