STRUCTURAL-ACOUSTIC OPTIMIZATION OF SANDWICH PANELS

Sandwich panels comprising face sheets enclosing a core are increasingly common structural elements in a variety of applications, including aircraft fuselages, flight surfaces, vehicle panels, lightweight enclosures, and bulkheads. This paper presents the optimization of various innovative sandwich configurations for minimization of their structural-acoustic response. Laminated face sheets and core geometries comprising honeycomb and truss-like structures are considered. The design flexibility associated with the class of considered composite structures and with truss-core configurations provides the opportunity of tailoring the structure to the load and dynamic response requirements of a particular application. The results demonstrate how the proper selection of selected key parameters can achieve effective reduction of the radiated sound power and how the identified optimal configurations can achieve noise reduction over different frequency ranges and for various source configurations.