An opposite to the structural resonance is the wave cancellation phenomenon—application of such conditions including active force, moment etc. when the first wave produced in the structure is canceled fully or is strongly decreased. Conditions allowing to strongly decrease the first wave came into practice within the last decades as the so-called active noise control in acoustic. Chung and Crocker [
6] proposed the acoustic wave cancellation induced by the monopole radiator. The acoustic wave was induced by the vibration of the simply supported beam. Approximated conditions have been found for the dipole radiators. Yang [
36] consider vibration of simple beams due to trains, in which moving loads have been represented via compositions of Dirac delta functions and Heaviside functions. Both wave cancellation and resonance conditions have been derived in closed analytical form. Also, comparisons of the results with finite element solutions have been performed. The wave cancellation conditions have been studied in closed form for discrete two mass points system by Dingyue et al. [
9]. Yang et al. [
35] considered the mechanism of the resonance and cancellation for train-induced vibrations in a bridge. The bridge is modeled by the simply supported beam on the elastic foundation. Loads are represented by the series of Delta functions pulse moving loads. The exact condition for the moving load is found to cause ether resonance or cancellation conditions. Yau et al. [
37] implemented tuned mass dampers (TMD) for cable-stayed bridges in order to decrease the vibration amplitude during the passing of a high speed train as an example of combination of active and passive control. It is shown that the larger the number of stay cables of a cable-stayed bridge, the smaller the impact response of the bridge. The moving load is represented by the pulse Dirac function. Among the active vibration control in structural systems one can select rather special cases allowing a closed form for the wave cancellation. Zhang and Chen [
38] have found the wave cancellation condition for a moving string being implemented as an additional tensioner. The effect is shown due to the the additional tensioner for the string rather than due to superposition of waves. Zhang et al. [
39] considered a piezoelectric actuator for the wave cancellation induced in a simply supported cylindrical Kirchhoff type shell. The solution was formulated in analytical form via sinusoidal harmonics. Schoeftner and Juergen in [
26] illustrated for the Bernoulli–Euler beam, that bonding piezoelectric layers with attached electric circuits can be used as a passive method for wave cancellation as a single point control (SPC). Both semi-analytical numerical computations and finite element computations in ANSYS were employed for the model verification. The active control of noise and vibration methods were widely developed and implemented in various fields of engineering practice, see the review in Kuo and Morgan [
20] and more recent monograph of Colin et al [
13]. Auersch in [
1] proposed a combined finite-element boundary-element method (FEBEM) where the response of the infinitely long plate is calculated by a numerical integration in the frequency-wave-number domain. Conditions for the wave reductions were shown. Vankata Rao et al. [
32] applied the finite element method to model Mindlin type plates and studied piezoelectric actuators for the vibration control. Futhazar et al. [
11] proposed active cloaking which allows to cancel waves in a specific finite domain of the infinite Kirchhoff plate. The sources as well as scatters are pulsed forces represented by Delta functions. Teo and Fleming in [
30] developed further an active damping control, the integral force feedback method (IFF). It is shown experimentally that the improved IFF method can achieve arbitrary damping for any mechanical system by introducing a feed-through term. There are also recent active noise control methods. The reconstruction of forces generated by multiple impacts occurring in linear elastic structures has been considered in [
25] in which, in addition, statistical methods have been involved. The wave boundary control method of large net structures was considered by Zuo et al. [
40]. In this article a net structure was modeled as a set of intersecting orthogonal strings, described by 1D wave equations. This representation of the net structure allows to derive various control laws in the closed forms. Lee et al. [
21] described experimental investigations demonstrating that the incident beams of ultrasonics waves can be canceled by using an elastic phononic crystal prism. Huang and Xu in [
14] proposed an active control method used for electromagnetic wave cancellation based on generation of a periodic signal in order to cancel the radar target echo. Three conditions should be satisfied for the cancellation. The source signal is represented by the Delta function. Lu et al. [
22] described resonance and cancellation conditions caused by the equidistant moving pulse loads in a pile-supported viaduct. Spans of the bridge are modelled as a simply supported beam loaded by the moving pulse load. It has been found that if the time lag between two neighboring moving loads is satisfying certain conditions with regards to the resonance frequency then either resonance or cancellation conditions may occur.
The novelty of the current contribution is the formulation of the wave cancellation conditions for the double impact system for an arbitrary structure. The double impact system is defined as a mechanical structure in which the first impact of finite duration enforces the vibrations in a structure and the second impact leads to cancellation of the vibrations in the whole structure. The second impact is specially constructed with the help of the introduced response function such that the vibrations induced by the first impact will be fully canceled.