Experimental study on vibration and damping of curved panel treated with constrained viscoelastic layer

This paper presents experimental investigation on the damping effects of constrained layer damping treatment on a curved panel. Vibration attenuation of the curved panel is achieved by attaching constraining layer damping patches at the optimal locations. The placement strategies of constrained layer patches are devised using the modal strain energy (MSE) method. Locations for application of damping patches are those, where modal strain energy is maximum for the particular mode. The treatment is then applied to the elements that have highest MSE in order to target specific modes of vibrations. Extensive experiments are conducted by making number of separate samples of viscoelastic and constrained layer damping patches for each configuration to damp different modes simultaneously or independently. The experimental results demonstrate utility of the modal strain energy technique as an effective tool for selecting the locations of the constrained layer damping treatment to achieve desired damping characteristics over a broad frequency band.