The active vibration control of composite shell structure has been performed with the optimized sensor/actuator system. For the design of sensor/actuator system, a method based on finite element technique is developed. The nine-node Mindlin shell element has been used for modeling the integrated system of laminated composite shell with PVDF sensor/actuator. The distributed selective modal sensor/actuator system is established to prevent the effect of spillover. Electrode patterns and lamination angles of sensor/actuator are optimized using genetic algorithm. Continuous electrode patterns are discretized according to finite element mesh, and orientation angle is encoded into discrete values using binary string. Sensor is designed to minimize the observation spillover, and actuator is designed to minimize the system energy of the control modes under a given initial condition. Modal sensor/actuator for the first and the second mode vibration control of singly curved cantilevered composite shell structure are designed with the method developed on the finite element method and optimization. For verification, the experimental test of the active vibration control is performed for the composite shell structure. Discrete LQG method is used as a control law.