D-optimal designs for sensor and actuator locations

Active control of noise and vibration is now possible in automobiles, aircraft, and many other devices. Where to place actuators, to control noise and vibration, and sensors, to measure the performance of the actuators, is a central question. Given a truss structure, we seek the k most effective locations to control and/or sense vibrations. A discrete D-optimal design has been proposed as a solution to this location problem. We develop a simple static tabu search and test its performance on an 80 node truss structure built at NASA-Langley Research Center. We show that our tabu search approach dominates the traditional approaches to finding D-optimal designs.