Estimating the Effects of Damping Treatments on the Vibration of Complex Structures

Damping treatments are used in most Naval platforms to reduce noise and vibration, and are therefore critical to structural acoustic performance. However, the complexity of naval structures often limits one's ability to accurately estimate the structural acoustic performance of a given damping treatment. As a result, some damping treatments represent a significant cost without a significant benefit. Costs include initial material and labor as well as routine maintenance that involves the replacement of treatments due to inspection of the underlying structure (see MILSTD-2148). The importance of this research lies in the possibility of identifying which damping treatments may be permanently removed or never installed without sacrificing substantial performance, thus significantly reducing the cost of naval platforms. The research has achieved this by developing a set of processing techniques for experimental data and structural acoustic models.