Vibroacoustic behavior and noise control studies of advanced composite structures

The research presented in this thesis is devoted to the problems of sound transmission and noise transmission control for advanced composite payload fairings. There are two advanced composite fairings under study. The first is a tapered, cylindrical advanced grid-stiffened composite fairing, and the second is a cylindrical ChamberCore composite fairing. A fully coupled mathematical model for characterizing noise transmission into a finite elastic cylindrical structure with application to the ChamberCore fairing is developed. It combines advantages of wave radiation principles and structural-acoustic modal interaction, and provides an ideal noise transmission model that can be extended to other finite cylindrical structures. Structural-acoustic dynamic parameters of the two fairings are obtained using a combination of numerical, analytical, and experimental approaches. An in-situ method for experimentally characterizing sound transmission into the fairings called noise reduction spectrum (NRS) is developed based on noise reduction. The regions of interest in the NRS curves are identified and verified during a passive control investigation, where various fill materials are added into wall-chambers of the ChamberCore fairing. Both Helmholtz resonators (HRs) and long T-shaped acoustic resonators (ARs) are also used to successfully control noise transmission into the ChamberCore fairing. In the process, an accurate model for the resonant frequency calculation and design of cylindrical HRs is derived. Further, a novel and more general model for the design of multi-modal, long, T-shaped ARs is developed, including three new end-correction equations that are validated experimentally.; The control results show that noise attenuation is significant in the controlled modes, and the control is also observed in some modes that are not targeted, due to acoustic modal coupling via the structure. Helmholtz resonators are found to produce between 2.0 and 7.7 dB increase in NRS in the targeted cavity modes while ARs produced 4.7 to 5.3 dB of control. Relative positioning between the matched resonators is heuristically optimized experimentally, and demonstrates that spacing should be maximized for best performance. Once the feasibility and optimization of resonator control were established, six integral acoustic resonators are fabricated directly into the wall-chambers of the ChamberCore structure. Performance is found to be as well as for the non-integrated resonators.