Beam steering of sound from flat panels using spatially-averaged objective functions

Abstract

The paper proposes a beam steering method for regulating sound radiation from flat panel structures using multiple structural velocity sensors. Velocity measurements from the structural sensors are used to estimate the velocity profile of the panel, which is then used to estimate the acoustic beam pattern of radiated sound. An objective function is defined for active beam steering purposes, representing the spatially-averaged error between the reference beam pattern and the estimated beam pattern of sound radiation in the far-field. Numerical studies on a rectangular flat panel are used to demonstrate the ability of the proposed method to regulate a beam pattern of sound for steering a beam to different directions in the far-field. It is demonstrated that the proposed method can modify the beam pattern of tonal sound radiation by modifying the vibration velocity profile of the panel.