Using the irrotational part of the structural intensity to identify sources of vibrational energy

The identification of vibrational sources can be done effectively by means of structural intensity estimates, as the structural intensity indicates the energy power flow of the flexural waves propagating through the structure. Considering the irrotational part of the structural intensity estimate removes parts of the structural intensity field which are related to the near-field, thus showing the part of the vibrational field that propagates to the far field. The use of the irrotational part of the structural intensity results in a more clear view of the physical sources that are generating active power to the structure. A recently developed approach to calculate the irrotational part of the structural intensity from measurement data was used and results are compared with another method from literature. It is shown that the recently developed approach converges well and gives good results by virtue of the smoothening effect of the test functional series expansion employed.status: publishe