Vibration Absorbers: A Review of Applications in Interior

Noise Control of Propeller Aircraft

R. I. WRIGHT
M. R. F KIDNER
Vibration andAcoustics Laboratory, Department ofMechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
(Received 10 January 2003; accepted 16 October 2003)

Abstract: Control of interior noise levels in aircraft has been a significant research area over the last two
decades. Vibration absorbers have often been researched as more efficacious solutions to this problem than
absorbent blankets or fully active systems. In this paper we review the large body of work performed in this
field and we offer an indication of the remaining areas for fruitful research. Surprisingly few installations of
vibration absorbers for interior noise control have been realized, and we believe this is due to the pervasive
belief in industry that vibration absorbers can only be applied to control resonant, not forced behavior in
a structure. The potential of adaptive passive control using vibration absorbers has been shown by many
researchers, and we believe that this direction may yield several practical solutions to the problem of interior
noise in aircraft.

Key Woids. vibration absorber, noise control, aircraft

1. INTRODUCTION
With the introduction of turbojet engines into commercial service in the mid-1950s, the
development ofpropeller technology all but ceased with research shifting towards improving
the turbojet design. The new jet engines allowed aircraft to travel at higher speeds and
altitudes, shortening travel time, while providing greater passenger comfort with lower cabin
noise and vibration (Magliozzi, 1984). During this time, increased cruise speed and passenger
comfort outweighed the lower fuel efficiency of the turbojets and turbofans compared to
propeller aircraft.
In January 1975, the Senate aeronautical and space science committee asked the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to address the airline fuel crisis.
NASA responded by assembling a task force consisting of NASA, the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), the Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Department of
Defense (DOD) members to evaluate different fuel saving concepts. The prevailing concept
was an advanced turboprop engine (ATE) design promoted by NASA-Lewis and Hamilton
Standard of Windsor Locks, CT. Subsequently, NASA initiated the Advanced Turboprop
Program (ATP) in 1978. This program brought together researchers from NASA, industry,
and universities with the goal of designing an ATE that would compete with the current state-

Journal oj Vibration and Control, 10: 1221-1237, 2004 DOI: 10.1177/1077546304041368

c 2004 Sage Publications

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1222 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. E KIDNER

of-the-art turbofans. The new APEs were to match or surpass the turbofans in reliability,
structural integrity, cruise speed and passenger' comfort, yet be considerably more fuel
efficient.
The resulting designs were known as propfans and had eight or more thin, highly
swept blades as opposed to conventional turboprops, which have up to four thicker straight
blades. This design overcame many obstacles such as high-speed compressibility losses and
acceptable environmental takeoff and approach noise. However, this unducted design was
not without problems. Along with delivering the predicted higher propulsion efficiencies, the
ATE designs also demonstrated undesirable higher cabin noise and vibration levels compared
to the jet engines they were intended to replace.
Over the past two decades, considerable research efforts have been directed towards
understanding and mitigating the propeller aircraft interior noise problem. To this end,
research simultaneously focused on many different aspects of the interior noise problem
including characterizing the propeller noise source, identifying the transmission paths into
the cabin, studying passenger perception, and developing criteria for acceptability. Once
these tasks were addressed, the research focus turned towards developing feasible solutions
that were both efficient in attenuating the propeller noise and cost effective for airlines to
implement and maintain.
The paper is organized as follows. First, the interior noise problem in turbo prop aircraft is
reviewed and modeling approaches are discussed. Following this, a review of active control
solutions is presented. Vibration absorbers and adaptive absorbers are then reviewed with
regard to noise control applications.

2. PROPELLER AIRCRAFT INTERIOR NOISE

The noise generated by turboprops is fundamentally different than that of fan jet engines. A
significant difference is that propeller noise is lower in frequency than jet noise due to the
lower operating speeds. Low-frequency, tonal noise has historically been known to cause
a higher degree of passenger annoyance. The tonal content of the propeller signature is
dominated by the propeller blade passage frequency (BPF) with additional content at its
higher harmonics. Propeller noise is most intense in the plane of the propeller rotation and
diminishes with distance away from this axial location; thus, it is considered a near-field
effect.
Deregulation of the airline industry contributed to the passenger noise problem. An
effect of deregulation was the replacement of large turbofan transports for short flights by
turboprops. These short flights were then extended, leading to passenger complaints. Using
turbojet aircraft as a benchmark, levels of 85-95 dB and 72-82 dB(A) are desirable comfort
objectives for long-range turboprops. Higher levels may be acceptable for shorter flights, but
levels over 100 dB or 85 dB(A) are considered uncomfortable (Metzger, 1981).
Several sources of interior noise have been reported by Magliozzi (1984) and Metzger
(1981), including propellers, engine vibrations, exhaust, turbo machinery, and turbulent air
flow over the aircraft fuselage. These sources can be categorized as having either airborne
paths, which propagate directly through the fuselage sidewall, or structure borne paths, which
transmit noise to the cabin through engine mounts as well as the wing and tail structures.
In order to strategically design noise reduction solutions, the mechanisms and paths of the
noise propagation into the aircraft cabin needed to be identified and studied. Therefore, much

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 VIBRATION ABSORBERS 1223

of the early interior noise research efforts focused on this (Mixon and Powell, 1984). Early
work by Metzger (1981) determined that the most dominant source of interior noise is the
direct airborne path from the propeller blades into the cabin through the fuselage sidewall.
This finding was supported by more recent work (Kuntz and Prydz, 1990). Fuller (1985,
1986) found that substantial noise reduction could be theoretically achieved by locating the
propeller source at least two fuselage diameters away from the fuselage surface. However,
little additional reduction was observed when locating the source any further than three
fuselage diameters. Evidence of structure borne noise was established by later tests on a
four engine Dash 7 commuter aircraft (Magliozzi, 1984), by comparing external fuselage
surface noise with cabin noise measurements. Additional structure borne noise paths have
been studied with control focusing on passive methods (Unruh, 1988), but the majority of
interior noise research has focused on understanding and controlling direct airborne propeller
noise.
The first investigation into the fundamental mechanisms by which low-frequency sound
is transmitted into aircraft interiors was performed by Fuller (1985, 1986). The fuselage was
modeled as an unstiffened infinite cylindrical shell absent of a floor and interior acoustic
damping. The propeller sources were modeled by acoustic dipoles, making use of their
directionality, located at approximately each propeller location. Fuller concluded that the
near-field and directional nature ofthe acoustic propeller sources are the dominant parameters
that determine the external pressure field that drives the fuselage vibration. Furthermore, the
resulting shell vibration, which exclusively drives the interior sound field, is dominated by
only a few low-order circumferential modes and the resulting interior sound field is also
of low modal density The circumferential modal response was found to be the primary
mechanism of low-frequency sound transmission into this aircraft fuselage model. The
simplistic nature of this analytical model contributed new insight into the physics of the
problem.

3. INTERIOR NOISE CONTROL

Interior noise control methods can be separated into three categories: passive control, active
noise control (ANC), and active structural acoustic control (ASAC). Passive control is a
treatment or structural modification that does not require a power source to achieve noise
control. ANC involves the use of secondary acoustic sources to "cancel" the noise. ASAC
is similar to active noise control except that the secondary sources are vibrational rather than
acoustic sources. An optimal noise control strategy is one that has the least impact on weight,
cost, performance of the aircraft and meets passenger comfort criteria (Metzger, 1981). To
compete with turbofan aircraft, noise control treatments for wing mounted turboprops must
attenuate cabin noise by an additional 25-30 dB beyond the bare fuselage level (Facey, 1988).

3.1. Passive Control Techniques

The earlier techniques for reducing interior aircraft noise focused on supplementary
treatments such as damping material, stiffeners and additional mass. All of these approaches
have been shown to be generally ineffective for controlling low-frequency propeller
harmonics. Acoustic damping in the form of insulating blankets and acoustic foam is limited
in thickness by the fuselage wall cavity, thus rendering it ineffective for attenuating such low

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1224 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. F KIDNER

frequencies. Adding stiffness or mass to the fuselage sidewalls has been shown to increase
transmission loss, but to meet interior noise requirements, the additional mass required for the
structural modifications would violate weight limitations. Weight limitations were imposed
to ensure that the solution to the interior noise problem would not offset the gain in fuel
efficiency
A concept known as syncrophasing has been studied extensively as a potential noise
reduction technique for multiple propeller aircraft. Syncrophasing modifies the external
pressure field by adjusting the relative rotational phase of the propellers. An investigation
of syncrophasing by Metzger (1983) experimentally isolated the contributions from each
propeller source, then simulated their recombination for different relative phase angles.
Promising syncrophase angles were then applied to a Lockheed P-3 airplane and found to
produce reductions ofthe order of 8-14 dB. Analytical (Fuller, 1984) and experimental (Jones
and Fuller, 1984) studies of syncrophasing were performed.
Placing Helmholtz resonators between the fuselage skin and the interior trim of an aircraft
cabin formed part of NASAs Propfan Test Assessment program. Helmholtz resonators are
the acoustic analogy of mechanical vibration absorbers and are usually tuned to an offending
frequency After bare-wall flight tests, a 10 ft section of a Gulfstream test aircraft was fitted
with a number of Helmholtz resonators. Centered about the propeller plane and mounted to
the cabin floor through vibration isolators to eliminate structural noise paths, the Helmholtz
resonators were tuned to the fundamental BPE Analysis showed interior noise reductions
of 25-30 dB compared to the bare-wall levels in flight without significant weiglt penalties
(Facey, 1988). It is not clear from the literature why the Helmholtz resonator sidewall
treatment was not advanced as a potential turboprop noise solution.

3.2. Active Control Techniques

As mentioned previously, there are two categories of active control applied to propeller
aircraft interior noise: ANC and ASAC. Active control consists of using control sources
to add secondary energy to a vibration or acoustic field to create a field identically opposite
that due to the primary source, effectively canceling the other. ANC uses acoustic sources
such as loudspeakers as control inputs to couple directly to the acoustic field to be controlled.
On the other hand, ASAC uses vibration inputs, such as shakers or piezoelectric materials, to
modify the sound field through the structural-acoustic coupling.

3.2.1. Active Noise Control

Zalas and Tichy (1984) were the first to report on the application of ANC in an aircraft.
On two different propeller aircraft, a single channel feedback loop was implemented using a
microphone as the error sensor and a loudspeaker as the control source. A 7-15 dB reduction
of the propeller noise was reported, but the spatial extent of this reduction was limited to less
than a quarter wavelength.
Lester and Fuller (1989) made an analytical evaluation ofANC for reduction of propeller
induced cabin noise. The secondary source strengths were determined to minimize the area-
weighted, mean square pressure in the propeller plane of the cylinder. Formulating the cost
function in this way leads to a linear matrix equation that is quadratic with respect to the vector
of unknown source strengths. Nelson et al. (1987) have shown that this matrix equation is

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minimized by a unique vector of secondary source strengths that can be obtained analytically
in closed form. The model produced reductions of up to 20 dB over a large area of the
propeller plane using between two and eight well-placed control sources.
A similar analytical investigation was also performed about the same time by Bullmore
et al. (1986), using ANC to minimize the total acoustic potential energy in a cylindrical
enclosure. This work went on to demonstrate that a practical alternative to minimizing the
global acoustic potential energy is to sample the acoustic field at a discrete number of sensor
locations and to minimize the sum of the squared pressures at these locations. Bullmore
et al. have proven the validity of this practical approximation by showing that this sum
is directly proportional to the true total acoustic potential energy. This technique has now
become standard practice in the field of active control. Using this approximation with 24
error sensors and the same 10 control sources, 4.3 dB reduction of the estimated acoustic
potential energy was achieved.
A full-scale test of previous ANC work was realized when Elliott et al. (1990) performed
in-flight ANC experiments on a British Aerospace 748 twin turboprop passenger aircraft.
An adaptive control system minimized the sum of the squares of 32 microphones using
16 loudspeakers as control sources. Subjective reductions were reportedly noticeable with
reductions over 7 dB(A) recorded at some seat locations.

3.2.2. Active Structural Acoustic Control

The first investigation into noise control using vibrational inputs was by Fuller and Jones
(1987) and was classed as a form of active vibration control applied to noise control. This
noise control approach was later called active structural interior noise control (ASINC), but
eventually came to be generally known as ASAC when Fuller was granted a US patent for
his "apparatus and method for global noise reduction" (Fuller, 1987).
Global attenuation was achieved by targeting the only structural mode that was well
coupled to the interior field. The vibration control input redistributes the energy from the
well-coupled structural mode into vibrational modes that do not couple well with the interior
acoustics. The additional control source energy increases the total shell vibration, but the
interior noise levels still fall because the resulting vibration field is poorly coupled to the
sound field. It has been concluded that only the shell modes that couple well with the interior
acoustic space need to be controlled. By identifying and targeting only the structural modes
that contribute most of the energy to the interior noise, the authors were able to achieve global
noise reduction while minimizing the number of control actuators.
The first demonstration of ASAC on a full-scale aircraft structure was performed by
Simpson et al. (1991) at Douglas Aircraft Company in 1989 using the aft section of a DC-9
jet. The test section is 34 ft long with full interior trim including seats and was enclosed by
a bulkhead plug at the forward end. Harmonic engine vibration was simulated by two 50
lb exterior shakers attached to the engine mount and two 25 lb control shakers were located
inside the fuselage section near the front and rear of the engine pylon. Several different test
configurations were evaluated to control either interior noise or fuselage vibration with up to
four error sensors. A typical test used a driving frequency of 170 Hz and global reductions of
the order of 5-10 dB were obtained at the error sensors, either microphones or accelerometers
according to the test. This demonstration showed for the first time the potential for ASAC
applied to a full-size aircraft.

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1226 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. F KIDNER

As more compact solid-state vibration transducers became readily available in the early
1990s, they were soon applied to the interior noise problem, with researchers citing further
weight penalty reductions and robust components with less moving parts. Specifically, recent
research has focused on applying piezoelectric actuators or patches directly to models of,
and real, aircraft fuselages for use as vibration actuators. Piezoelectric materials respond to
applied voltages by expanding and contracting along their dimensions. This expansion and
contraction is capable of producing very high forces and induces shear strain in a structure
to which it is bonded. Conversely, piezoelectric materials respond to induced strain by
producing a measurable voltage across their electrodes and so can be used sensors.
Lefebvre (1991) used piezoelectric patches bonded directly to the wall of a composite
fuselage model for interior noise experiments at NASA Langley Research Center. This scale
model was constructed of laminated carbon fiber and included the stringers, ring frames,
and cabin floor. The experiment was intended to validate the use of piezoelectric actuators
bonded to the fuselage to control interior noise in aircraft structures. The fuselage was excited
harmonically by an external loudspeaker to approximate a propeller source. Global interior
noise control of the order of 12 dB was reported, validating the use of piezoactuators in ASAC
control systems.
A novel variant of the filtered-x LMS feedforward control algorithm was demonstrated
in-flight on a Raytheon 1900D airliner in August 1998 (Palumbo et al., 1999). The
Raytheon 1900D is a widely used 19 passenger twin turboprop with four blade propellers
that are syncrophased, creating a disturbance frequency of 103 Hz at cruise. This
fundamental frequency and the first two harmonics were targeted in this series of tests.
The aircraft's interior trim was removed for testing. Mounted to the ring frames in pairs
to increase authority, 42 inertial actuators provided the control inputs at 21 locations, and
32 microphones, located at seated and standing head locations, were used to construct the
acoustic cost function. The actuator locations were optimized from a survey of 82 candidate
locations using an exhaustive search that attempted to simultaneously minimize interior noise
and control effort.
The control algorithm, the PC-LMS, computes the control signals in a decoupled
coordinate system. Each of the decoupled components of the control signal is called a
principle component (PC). Singular value decomposition (SVD) is used to calculate the
transform matrices into and out of the PC space at each control frequency Each PC has a
unique control effort penalty and convergence coefficient. The authors report notable control
effort savings by excluding PCs that weakly couple to the primary sound field. In-flight
noise control of 15 dB was reported while controlling only the fundamental blade passage
frequency
Much work has continued in recent years with limited success. There has been no
magic bullet as yet for controlling propeller noise to levels equivalent to those of current
jet aircraft. The interior noise produced by propellers has continued to cause passenger
discomfort and hinder the mainstream commercial deployment of turboprop aircraft. This
remains an unsolved problem that still receives considerable attention from the aircraft
industry, government agencies such as NASA, and academics.
In the next section we focus on passive noise control efforts using tuned vibration
absorbers and we review the limited published work on applying these devices to the propeller
aircraft interior noise problem.

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3.3. TVA Interior Noise Control

Tuned vibration absorbers (TVAs) fall in the category of passive noise control as they
require no externally supplied energy to achieve performance. Metzger (1981) suggested that
vibration absorbers would be well suited to the tonal nature of the propeller driven aircraft
interior noise problem. Careful consideration should be given to the design of TVAs for
use under variable frequency excitations such as aircraft engines. There is a direct tradeoff
between control authority and control bandwidth with respect to the TVA damping. For
aircraft application, it is desirable to keep the mass small, as this requires there to be low
internal damping for the TVA to remain effective. Unfortunately, small damping values
dramatically limit the effective bandwidth, potentially rendering the TVA ineffective for
much of a turboprop's flight conditions.
In 1983, Fokker reported on the use of TVAs for cabin noise control in the propeller-
driven Fokker F27 Friendship aircraft (Waterman et al., 1983). The fundamental BPF is 88
Hz at cruise, which, along with the first two harmonics, dominates the cabin noise spectrum.
Fokker's approach was to use TVAs to pin the fuselage at the attachment points and to space
the TVAs close together so that the structure appeared very stiff at the excitation frequency
Reductions of 10 dB averaged over 45 forward cabin locations were reported in the 80 Hz
one-third-octave band. This noise reduction was achieved with a weight penalty of only
30 kg. Additional TVAs were also mounted to the backs of the trim panels to increase the
transmission loss of the double panel trim-fuselage system. Three different sets of TVAs,
each set tuned to one of the three dominate propeller tones during "fixed-RPM" cruise were
installed on the backs of trim panels. The addition of these trim TVAs further reduced interior
noise by 2 dB(A) with only another 25 kg increase in weight.
The noise control approach of Saab (Halvorsen and Emborg, 1989) was to reduce the low-
order modal fuselage response by applying viscoelastic tuned dampers to the fuselage frames
near the propeller plane. To design the tuned dampers, various mass, resonant frequency,
and damping values were evaluated using experimentally estimated structural driving point
frequency response functions at the candidate mounting locations. Four forward cabin frames
were treated with 72 dampers while staying within an undisclosed weight budget.
Average reductions in frame vibration of about 10 dB at the BPF tone and 5 dB at the first
harmonic were reported relative to an untreated aircraft. Noise reductions were only reported
in the propeller plane. Here, a maximum reduction of 10 dB was observed at the BPF tone
with a reduction of 8 dB(A) overall in the plane of the propellers. Halvorsen and Emborg
also noted that the amount of control achievable with the tuned dampers was far greater than
would be possible with added mass or stiffness for a given increase in weight.
TVAs were one of three passive modifications that Beech Corporation made to their line
of King Air turboprops. Beech measured 1.4-4.3 dB(A) total reduction in the cabin and, in
the low-frequency range, the reported reductions were between 6 and 11 dB in the cockpit
and about 17 dB in the center of the cabin. The B200 model had 32 pairs of TVAs installed
and reported reductions were 3.4-5.4 dB(A) in the center of the cabin and about 16 dB in
the cockpit in the same low-frequency range. Beech acknowledged that compared to a fully
active system their solution attenuated sound over a much narrower frequency range, but
it also added much less to the price of an airplane. At that time the estimated cost of an
active control system, advertised to achieve broad-band reductions of 12-16 dB, was about
$500,000 per system excluding the cost of aircraft model-specific development.

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4. TUINED VIBRATION ABSORBERS

The first publication on the use of a system resembling a vibration absorber was by Watts
(1883), describing fluid filled tanks to reduce rolling in the warship HMS Inflexible. Frahm, in
1902, designed a fluid tank system for reducing the rolling motion in the German ships Bremen
and Europa (den Hartog, 1956). Seven years later, the first patent pertaining to damping the
vibration of one body by applying a secondary vibrating body was filed by Frahm (1909). It
was another two decades before the first full theory of the vibration absorber was presented
by den Hartog and Ormondroyd (1928). Since then, several well-known textbooks on the
theory of vibration (Timoshenko, 1937; den Hartog, 1956; Harris and Crede, 1961; Hunt,
1979; Korenev and Reznikov, 1993) have all included the principles of TVAs.

4.1. Modern TVA Applications

The primary function of TVAs has not changed much over the last century. They are still used
primarily to suppress narrow-band vibration in a simple and cost effective manner. A large
number of these vibration applications are steady-state single-frequency problems, such as a
rotating imbalance in, say, industrial machinery
An excellent overview of the evolution and applications of TVA technology was
published by Sun et al. (1995).

4.2. Vibration Control

Vibration problems suitable for TVAs can be classified into two categories. The first are
forced vibrations in which a structure is exposed to an undesired harmonic excitation, such
as a rotating imbalance. These are the most common problems TVAs are used to solve. The
second type of problem involves resonant behavior where a structure may be exposed to a
broad-band excitation, but only a select mode needs to be controlled. Accordingly, there
are two classical TVA design methods, one corresponding to each type of vibration problem
discussed above. A particular type of TVA, also known as a tuned mass damper (TMD), is
used for modal response vibration problems and is designed to provide the maximum amount
of damping to a vibrational mode of the host structure. Known as the equal-peak method
(Snowdon, 1968), the TMD is tuned to the frequency of the target mode. The damping is
adjusted such that the maximum value of the two resonant peaks is minimized, resulting in
two peaks with equal maximum amplitude. This minimizes the response of the host structure
in the frequency range of the target mode.
The second design method targets harmonic disturbances that result in a forced response
of a structure. This is the classical use of the device and will be denoted by the term TVA, to
differentiate from TMD. Design of a TVA involves precisely tuning the resonant frequency
of the device to match the tonal disturbance, but in contrast to TMDs very little damping is
desired as this reduces the effectiveness of the device. The remainder of this discussion will
focus solely on TVA devices.
Although the most common TVA configuration is the familiar mass-spring, these devices
have been realized using other simple elements such as pendulums (Sharif-Baklhitar and
Shaw, 1988) and beams (Waterman et al., 1983; Kidner and Brennan, 2002). Solid-state
vibration absorbers using resonant electrical circuits have also been proposed (Hargood and

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von Flotow, 1991; Davis and Lesieutre, 2000). TVAs can also be designed to have multiple
resonances, demonstrated by Snowdon et al. (1984) using two beams in a cruciform. This
as
configuration allows simultaneous control of two harmonic frequencies with a single device.
Brennan (1997) extended this idea and used superposition to create a wide-band TVA that
used 10 slightly different cruciforms attached to a common base. More examples of recent
work using passive TVAs in vibration control can be found in Smith (1991), Juang (1984),
and Brennan (1998).

4.3. Noise Control

More recently, TVAs have been investigated as a means of controlling noise radiation from
a vibrating surface. Jolly and Sun (1996) also recognized that the conventional approach
of placing TVAs on regions of high structural response was not always appropriate for
controlling sound radiation via the structural-acoustic interaction. In particular, they studied
how the TVA tuning, relative to the critical frequency of the panel, affected the radiation
efficiency and total radiated power. The major observation from the results obtained by
this work is that the presence of TVAs on a structure, under certain placement and tuning
configurations, can actually increase the radiation efficiency of the structure in the vicinity
of their tuning frequency This was attributed to the increase in coupling between structural
modes through the TVAs. Reductions in structural vibration may be offset by an increase in
radiation efficiency, resulting in poor noise control performance from the TVA treatment.
Fuller et al. (1995) presented the concept of allowing the tuned frequency of the devices
to deviate from the harmonic excitation in an attempt to minimize a global quantity such
as total fuselage kinetic energy or total acoustic potential energy This is in contrast to
all previous work, which focused on minimizing a localized quantity such as attachment
point fuselage displacement. Called "global detuning", a small number of TVAs acting
together are used to achieve global performance rather than many TVAs acting individually
to stop fuselage vibration. Analytical work has been shown that models a propeller aircraft
fuselage as a simply-supported cylinder driven by harmonic external pressure loading. Four
TVAs were located in the propeller plane, each having an identical fixed mass. The
resonant frequencies of the devices were allowed to vary between upper and lower imposed
constraints. Both structural and acoustic global performance was evaluated for the three
tuning cases: perfectly tuned to the excitation frequency, detuned to minimize structural
energy, and detuned to minimize acoustic energy
In an investigation by Huang and Fuller (1997) interior noise reductions were obtained
when several absorbers were distributed in the area of the external noise source and their
tuning frequencies were slightly detuned from that of the excitation.
The first experimental application of globally detuned adaptive vibration absorbers was
reported by Carneal and Fuller (1996). In a joint research initiative between the Vibration
and Acoustics Laboratory (VAL) at Virginia Tech, Barry Controls, and Hood Technology
Corporation (HTC), vibration absorbers were applied to an engine mount of a Cessna Citation
III business jet fuselage in an attempt to reduce interior noise caused by engine vibration.
The vibration absorbers had a variable stiffness that was adjustable by changing the pre-
load of the suspension springs. The spring pre-load was changed using a stepper motor to
change the distance between the base and mass of the absorber.

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1230 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. F KIDNER

Tuning the TVAs to the disturbance frequency was performed using the 90 phase tuning
algorithm, which tries to drive the TVA mass and base accelerometer signals into quadrature.
This TVA configuration was shown to reduce interior sound levels by 15-20 dB at the
excitation frequency, depending on the test frequency (275, 280, or 285 Hz) and TVA location.
Detuning the TVAs at the inboard locations was shown to provide an additional 1.5-2 dB
reduction of interior sound levels.
The conclusion was that tuning the TVAs performs well for a flexural system when the
TVAs are collocated with the disturbance and when the system has a limited number of
degrees of freedom. However, when the system is flexural with many degrees of freedom and
the TVAs are not collocated with the disturbance, global detuning is generally more effective
for sound reduction. Most importantly, global detuning was never observed to increase sound
levels over perfectly tuned TVAs.
4.4. TVA Parameter Optimization
There are only three parameters in a TVA: mass, stiffness, and damping. It is these parameters
along with structural locations that are typically chosen as optimization parameters for a
TVA system. Optimization of a passive TVA system is only sensible if it is to be applied
to a time and spatially invariant vibrating system, as the devices cannot adapt to changing
excitations. The difficulty in designing a TVA system arises because the cost functions to be
minimized, which are typically global quantities, are almost always nonlinear functions of
the TVA parameters.
Wang and Cheng (1989) compare four optimization methods for tuning TVAs: the equal
peak method, the minimal variance method, the energy method, and the area ratio method.
An H2 approach to TVA parameter optimization is reported in Stech (1994). DiDomenico
(1994) uses a neural network to choose the optimal combination of spring stiffness and passive
damping that minimizes the total vibrational energy in a multimode T-shaped truss structure.
Neural network optimization reportedly yielded parameters that outperformed both classical
den Hartog parameters and a gradient optimization in damping the impulse response of the
structure.
These papers illustrate the potential for using an optimally configured TVA system using
a small number ofabsorbers to reduce noise radiated from a structure. However, there remains
much unexplored territory in the realm of optimizing a TVA for noise and vibration control
applications.
5. ADAPTIVE TUNED VIBRATION ABSORBERS

TVAs have a very narrow-band, fixed frequency response and, as a result, each has a
very limited range of applications. Typical TVA applications are time-invariant, tonal
disturbances. If a passive TVA is applied to a system where the excitation changes over time,
the absorber could become mistuned and its effectiveness drop considerably In some cases,
mistuned absorbers can cause an increase in system response. The usefulness of a particular
TVA can be greatly expanded if the ability to modify the passive properties can be realized;
either to track and suppress time-varying harmonic disturbances, such as a variable speed
motor, or to apply a more mass-like or stiffness-like impedance to a structure. Changing the
passive properties of a vibration absorber has the potential for widespread applications in the
field of vibration and noise control.

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 VIBRATION ABSORBERS 1231

ii

Figure 1. Linear vibration absorber (after Ryan et al., 1994).

Adapting a TVA involves changing the resonant frequency and/or the damping in the
device. Changing the resonant frequency requires -changing either the effective mass or
stifness of the TVA. The added flexibility of an adaptable TVA (AL'VA) usually requires
the added complexity of a control algorithm to monitor the performance of the device and
adapt as necessary. A review of ATVAs including several examples of tuning algorithms
was given by von Flotow et al. (1994). The delays associated with an adaptable device are
categorized into a logic delay, an actuation delay, and a dynamic delay A brief discussion
on how adaptation delay will affect performnance in time-varying disturbance applications is
also included. There are many different AI'VA design concepts to be found in the literature,
a brief cross-section of these devices is presented in this section.

5.1. Design Concepts

One realization of an AI'VA is presented by Ryan et al. (1994) consisting of a mass sliding
horizontally on a linear rod as seen in Figure 1.
Long et al. (1995) used a pneumatic version of an ATVA, which employed inflatable
bellows to suspend a reaction mass, as seen in Figure 2. Long improved on the tuning
algorithm proposed by Ryan by attempting to tune the device by driving the reaction mass and
outer casing into quadrature. An accelerometer was mounted to each and the inner product
of these time signals was computed. A perfectly tuned device will have an inner product of
zero. The sign on a non-zero result indicates the necessary stiffness correction.
The ATVA described by Charette et al. (1997) uses a stepper motor to open and close a
V-shaped support. The stepper motor itself is used as the reaction mass and is mounted to the
V-shaped support by two linear rods acting in bending as springs as depicted in Figure 3.
Another interesting concept of an active vibration absorber is presented by Nagemn et al.
(1997), consisting of an electromechanical transducer and a tunable resonant electrical circuit.
The device works by converting large mechanical vibration oscillations of the structure into
large electrical oscillations in the resonant circuit, thus attenuating the mechanical response
near the electrical resonance. This device is conceptually very similar to the solid-state device
mentioned in Hagood and von Flotow (199 1).

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1232 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. E KIDNER

:NIt xuiS-

Figure 2. Pneumatic vibration absorber (after Long et al., 1995).

Figure 3. V-type vibration absorber (after Charette et al., 1997).

An adaptive Helmholtz resonator is described by de Bedout et al. (1997), whereby the

compliant element (in this case the volume of the resonator cavity) is changed by rotating an
interior movable wall, as seen in Figure 4. The wall is controlled by a DC motor which is
actuated by a two-stage tuning algorithm similar to that used by Long et al. (1995). The fine-
tuning is carried out by a gradient-based feedback algorithm, which the authors recognize
is sensitive to local minima. Consequentially, the purpose of the open-loop tuning is to first
roughly tune the resonator to a region near the global cost minimum.

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 VIBRATION ABSORBERS 1233

Figure 4. Variable Helmholtz resonator (after de Bedout, 1997).

Figure 5. Beam-like adaptive vibration absorbers (after Kidner and Brennan, 2002).

Kidner (1999) and Kidner and Brennan (2001, 2002) report on research on a beam-like
TVA whose resonant frequency was tunable by changing the geometry of the beam cross-
section (see Figure 5). A feedback control system was also applied to actively remove
damping using piezoactuators (see Figure 6). Therefore, both the stiffness and damping of
Kidner 's absorber were independently controllable.
There are two devices in the literature that share similarities with the AEVA. One has been
called the delayed resonator (DR) and was invented by Olgac (1995). A working prototype
has not yet been reported in the literature at this time. A second device, known as the linear
active resonator (LAR), was invented by Jalili and Olgac (1 999b).
The objective of this design is to create a perfectly resonating device, absent of any
damping, to completely absorb vibration at a single frequency The working frequency is a
design parameter and must be specified a priori. Most often configured as a device resembling
an inertial actuator, the DR design makes use of position feedback with a pure time delay and
a purely real gain to tune the device. Feedback is used to move the poles of the hardware
device to the marginally stable location on the imaginary axis of the S-plane corresponding
to the desired resonant frequency The time delay adjusts the phase shift between the input
and output of the controller while the gain controls the amplitude. The closed-formn solutions
for the required time delay and gain are presented by Olgac in the literature. The DR has
been analyzed in both the continuous and discrete time domains. A stability analysis for both
domains is also included in the literature.

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1234 R. I. WRIGHT and M. R. F KIDNER

Figure 6. Variable damping and stiffness beam-like vibration absorbers (after Kidner and Brennan, 2001).

Digital controllers provide a convenient means to implement time delay in a control loop,
but this approach becomes problematic when attempting to tune multiple DR devices with
a common controller. This difficulty arises when the passive DR devices have non-identical
passive properties and thus require different time delays. Since digital control hardware relies
on a fixed clock cycle, only time delays that are integer multiples of the clock period can be
realized. Jalili and Olgac (1999a) acknowledge the difficulty in tuning multiple DRs to the
same disturbance frequency
Other versions of the DR included multiple resonances (Olgac, 1996), although these
are not variable for a given passive device. Also, different feedback signals such as relative
position feedback (Olgac and Hosek, 1997) and acceleration feedback (Olgac et al., 1997)
were explored. However, these devices still work on the basic principles described above.

6. CONCLUSIONS
Over the last two decades, a substantial body of work has been performed on the problem
of reducing interior noise levels in aircraft. Vibration absorbers have also gone through a
renaissance in recent years, and a large number of new adaptation approaches have been
developed. The combination of these two research areas has given rise to promising results
in a few studies. The adoption of adaptive vibration absorbers as a part of the standard noise
control approach for turboprop aircraft has yet to occur. Compared to fully active systems,
they give very good performance per unit cost and are capable of achieving noise reductions
at much lower frequencies than passive blankets and damping treatments.
In summary, no single approach has proven to be a viable solution to the propeller aircraft
interior noise problem. As previous results have suggested, the ultimate solution will be
a hybrid system consisting of several different technologies working together or multiple
independent systems installed on an aircraft. Much progress has been made in understanding
the nature of the propeller aircraft noise problem, and control efforts have yielded insight into
which methods have potential. However, the passenger annoyance problem has not yet been
solved and remains a major obstacle in the widespread deployment of turboprop aircraft for
commercial service.

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 VIBRATION ABSORBERS 1235

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