Optimal Damping for the 1D Wave Equation Using a Single Damper

Abstract: Vibrational structures are susceptible to catastrophic failures or structural damages when external forces induce resonances or repeated unwanted oscillations. One common mitigation strategy is to use dampers to suppress these disturbances. This leads to the problem of finding optimal damper viscosities and positions for a given vibrational structure. Although extensive research exists for the case of finite-dimensional systems, optimizing damper positions remains challenging due to its discrete nature. To overcome this, we introduce a novel model for the damped wave equation (at the PDE level) with a damper of viscosity $\mathfrak{g}$ at position $\mathfrak{p}$ and develop a system-theoretic input/output-based analysis in the frequency domain. In this system-theoretic formulation, while we consider average displacement as the output, for input (forcing), we analyze two separate cases, namely, the uniform and boundary forcing. For both cases, explicit formulas are derived for the corresponding transfer functions, parametrized by $\mathfrak{p}$ and $\mathfrak{g}$. This explicit parametrization by $\mathfrak{p}$ and $\mathfrak{g}$ facilitates analyzing the optimal damping problem (at the PDE level) using norms such as the $\mathcal{H}<em>2$ and $\mathcal{H}</em>\infty$ norms. We also examine limiting cases, such as when the viscosity is very large or when no external damping is present. To illustrate our approach, we present numerical examples, compare different optimization criteria, and discuss the impact of damping parameters on the damped wave equation.