Abstract This paper presents an investigation into the development of an adaptive active control mechanism for vibration suppression using genetic algorithms (GAs). GAs are used to estimate the adaptive controller characteristics, where the controller is designed on the basis of optimal vibration suppression using the plant model. This is realized by minimizing the prediction error of the actual plant output and the model output. A MATLAB GA toolbox is used to identify the controller parameters. A comparative performance of the conventional recursive least-squares (RLS) scheme and the GA is presented. The active vibration control system is implemented with both the GA and the RLS schemes, and its performance assessed in the suppression of vibration along a flexible beam structure in each case.