Numerical vibroacoustic analysis of plates with constrained-layer damping patches

A numerical vibroacoustic model that can manage multilayered plates locally covered with damping patches is presented. All the layers can have an on-axis orthotropic viscoelastic behavior. Continuity of displacements and transverse shear stresses at each interface is enforced, which permits to write the entire displacement field in function of the displacements of the--common--first layer, leading to a two-dimensional plate model. The problem is then discretized by Rayleigh-Ritz's method using a trigonometric basis that includes both sine and cosine functions in order to treat various boundary conditions. The excitation can be of mechanical kind (concentrated or distributed forces) or of acoustic kind (plane wave of any incidence, diffuse field, etc.). The model permits to compute different vibroacoustic indicators: the mean square velocity of the plate, the radiation efficiency, and the transmission loss. Comparisons between the present model and numerical results from literature or finite element computations show that the model gives good results in both mechanical and acoustical aspects. Then, a comparison of the effects of different distributions of patches is presented. The role of the surface covering rate is first discussed, followed by a study involving different geometries for the same surface covering rate.