Abstract: This paper describes experiment investigations of the effect of constrained damping layers on vibration control of ship structural panels. The structural damping effects of different configurations as well as the positioning of exciting points have been investigated. The test results show that:(1) The vibration level of ship structural panels can always be decreased to some exteat after adding constrained damping layers. (2) The picking up distance way from exciting sources have some influence on the damping capacity, near the position of exciting sources, the damping effects perform not well. (3) The effectiveness of damping layers is relevant with the exciting style and positioning of damping layers, local damping layer treatments can obtain a better damping effect than that of whole treatments to target specific vibration mode of structural panel.