An enhanced lightness and thinness is the inevitable trend of modern industrial production, which will also lead to prominent low-frequency vibration problems in the associated structure. To solve the vibration problem of thin plate structures in various engineering fields, the active constrained layer damping (ACLD) thin plate structure is taken as the research object to study vibration control. Based on the FEM method, energy method, and Hamilton principle, the dynamic model of an ACLD thin plate structure is derived, in which the Golla–Hughes–McTavish (GHM) model is used to characterize the damping characteristics of the viscoelastic layer, and the equivalent Rayleigh damping is used to characterize the damping characteristics of the base layer. The order of the model is reduced based on the high-precision physical condensation method and balance reduction method, and the model has good controllability and observability. An LQR controller is designed to actively control the ACLD sheet, and the controller parameters and piezoelectric sheet parameters are optimized. The results show that the finite element model established in this paper is accurate under different boundary conditions, and the model can still accurately and reliably describe the dynamic characteristics of the original system in the time and frequency domain after using the joint reduction method. Under different excitation and boundary conditions, LQR control can effectively suppress structural vibration. Considering the performance and cost balance, the most suitable control parameter for the system is: Q-matrix coefficient is between 1 × 104 and 1 × 105, the R-matrix coefficient is between 1 and 10, and the thickness of the piezoelectric plate is 0.5 mm.

A finite element dynamic model of the sandwich composite plate was developed based on classical laminate theory and Hamilton’s principle. A 4-node, 7-degree-of-freedom three-layer plate cell is constructed to simulate the interaction between the substrate, the viscoelastic damping layer, and the piezoelectric material layer. Among them, the viscoelastic layer is referred to as the complex constant shear modulus model, and the equivalent Rayleigh damping is introduced to represent the damping of the substrate. The established dynamics model has too many degrees of freedom, and the obtained dynamics model has good controllability and observability after adopting the joint reduced-order method of dynamic condensation in physical space and equilibrium in state space. The optimal quadratic (LQR) controller is designed for the active control of the sandwich panel, and the parameters of the controller parameters, the thickness of the viscoelastic layer, and the optimal covering position of the sandwich panel are optimized through simulation analysis. The results show that the finite element model established in this paper is still valid under different boundary conditions and different covering methods, and the model can still accurately and reliably represent the dynamic characteristics of the original system after using the joint step-down method. Under different excitation signals and different boundary conditions, the LQR control can effectively suppress the vibration of the sandwich plate. The optimal cover position of the sandwich plate is near the solid support end and far from the free-degree end. The parameters of controller parameters and viscoelastic layer thickness are optimized from several angles, respectively, and a reasonable optimization scheme can be selected according to the actual requirements.