Acoustical comfort of vehicles: A combination of sound and vibration

Abstract

As vehicles become more and more quiet, the customer’s sensitivity to acoustical comfort increases. The acoustical comfort is not independent of the vibrations the driver can feel in the seat and at the steering. The passenger of a vehicle must be regarded as part of a vibro-acoustic system. Correspondingly, the subjective judgement which passengers make about their impression of levels of acoustic comfort encompasses both sound and vibration. Achievement in this field depends on obtaining knowledge about the interaction between sound and vibration and how these factors impact subjective evaluation. To save time and money prediction tools for the estimation of sound and vibration contributions into the vehicle cabin are very important in order to simulate the final comfort with respect to sound and vibration. Based on the binaural transfer path analysis in combination with the binaural transfer path synthesis a sound and vibration reproduction in a so-called SoundCar can be realized with a very good simulation of a real situation of a car. First research tests completed for the European research project OBELICS (Objective Evaluation of Interior Car Sound) have shown that the use of SoundCar may result in more reliable sound characteristic and quality evaluation.