Acoustic evaluation of a vehicle cabin by using energy-based surface contributions

Abstract

Contribution analyses play a crucial role in the design process of vehicle cabins. In current implementations, however, surface contributions are only evaluated for single field points. The identification of surface contributions with regard to an entire cavity is accompanied with a cumbersome volume integral. This study aims to abridge this tedious volume integral by evaluating the surface contributions regarding a grid with regularly distributed field points. For this purpose, the boundary element method is used to solve the acoustic Helmholtz equation. In contrast to current techniques, the sound energy is deployed as the objective function. As the sound energy is sensitive to the sound pressure and the particle velocity, surface contributions can be also identified in regions with low sound pressure values. In order to validate the proposed framework, the vehicle interior noise problem is examined. Initial findings confirm the relevance of energy-based surface contributions, as entire volumes can be acoustically evaluated in an efficient way.