Active noise control with the active muffler in automotive exhaust system

Abstract

This study experimentally demonstrates the use of active muffler attached to the automotive exhaust system to reduce exhaust noise. For improving the signal to noise ratio in the process of estimation of secondary path transfer functions, the on-line algorithm that conventional inverse modeling is combined with adaptive line enhancer is used as the control algorithm. Active muffler is designed that the primary noise and the control sound are propagated as a plane wave in the outlet. Therefore, the error microphone could be placed out of the tail pipe center of a high temperature and the radiation noise to the outside could be reduced in the whole area around the outlet. The control experiment for reducing exhaust noise with active muffler is implemented during run-up at no load. From the experimental results presented, compared with the conventional off-line method, the proposed on-line method is capable to acquire a reduction of exhaust noise above 5 dB in overall sound power level.