Abstract
This paper aims to address vibration problems that occur in machines, structures, and vehicles. Vibration is one of the causes of various issues in these systems. While vibration problems can arise from various factors, the vibration can be suppressed by optimizing the shape of the structure if the excitation force can be estimated. Another method is to suppress vibration by placing damping elements in the structure. In this case, more effective damping performance can be achieved by efficiently positioning the damping elements. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the simultaneous optimization of damper arrangement and model shape. The objective is to minimize the total kinetic energy of the structure, under the constraint of mass. In shape optimization, the modal method is used to derive the shape gradient function considering the effect of the viscous damper, and H1 gradient method is used to modify the model shape. In damper arrangement optimization, since the number of combinations of dampers is large, the genetic algorithm is used to reduce the computational time. The system for shape optimization using the H1 gradient method and the shape gradient function, and damper arrangement optimization using a genetic algorithm, is established by combing CAE analysis software HyperWorks and a self-made program. A numerical example shows both the shape optimization and the optimization of damper arrangement work properly. Additionally, it also shows that using a genetic algorithm can significantly reduce the computational time required to find the optimal combination of dampers.
