A generalised approach for active control of structural–interior global noise: Practical implementation

The experimental validation of a generalised approach to the sensing of orthogonal contributors to the global error (acoustic potential energy) within a coupled structural–acoustic cavity is presented. The goal is the measurement and control of the global error without any knowledge of the structural dynamics of the noise source, based on an acoustic centric decomposition approach that is applicable to any noise source. Two sensing approaches are attempted, structural and acoustic sensing, to measure the global error within the coupled enclosure. Once estimates of the global error are obtained, minimisation with an adaptive feedforward controller is implemented. The level of achieved attenuation in the global error is compared. The achieved level of attenuation is also compared to the maximum level of attenuation of the global error that can be achieved based on the disturbance/secondary source arrangement. The maximum level of attenuation is evaluated from experimental data, rather than pure theoretical methods.