Eigenmode sensitivity of damped sandwich structures

Abstract

The modeling of the linear free vibration of a sandwich structure including viscoelastic layers yields a complex nonlinear eigenvalue problem. In this paper, the sensitivity of eigensolutions is computed using a homotopy-based asymptotic numerical method, then a first-order automatic differentiation. The generality of the proposed method enables us to consider any analytical frequency-dependent viscoelastic law in the modeling and the sensitivity computation. Its application potential is demonstrated by computing the sensitivity of eigenmodes, eigenfrequencies and modal loss factors of sandwich beams and plates to various perturbations.