ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews applications in structural-acoustic optimization. The author concentrates on problems in passive noise control. Several dozen papers on structural-acoustic optimization were found. An increasing community of authors indicates optimization of structures whereas a close-up confirms that just a few different variants were investigated. Herein, structural-acoustic optimization is understood as an autonomous (mostly iterative) search to minimize a certain objective function. In a brief survey of the literature, the articles are categorized into academic and more realistic applications. A few of them are discussed in more detail. These three applications have in common that a shell contour is optimized to obtain certain acoustic characteristics. The first application is the design of carillon bells, the second example reviews the design of a loudspeaker diaphragm, and the third application consists of the design of sedan body panels. It is emphasized that shell contour optimization accounts for an efficient tool to influence local structural stiffness without increasing the mass.
