Analysis of an automobile door closure vibroacoustic response

Abstract

The acoustic response of a car door latch has been shown to directly impact the customers’ perceived quality and value evaluation of the automobile. This work introduces an experimentally validated computational model of three door latch components. The transient sound pressure level response of the three door latch components during door closure was collected in a semianechoic chamber using a three-element condenser microphone array. Postprocessing methodologies such as sound pressure level versus 1/3 octave band and continuous wavelet transform analysis were performed. This provided an in-depth analysis on the overall acoustic response and identification of dominant frequencies corresponding to four specific impact events during latch operation. Computational finite element analysis of the closure system using a rigid body, and explicit dynamic and transient structural acoustic analyses provided additional insights into the latch component interactions and the acoustic response generated empirically. Recorded average sound pressure level, frequency decomposition, and impact reaction forces are presented in addition to a comparison between the acoustic response for two different door closure speeds. It was found that an increased door closure speed increased the response sound pressure level, decreased damping of the primary impact, and decreased the frequency bandwidth of the response, thereby generating an acoustic response that would be perceived as noisier, less safe, and less secure by customers. These findings provide additional insights into the primary impact acoustic response of an automotive door latch during closure. The methodology introduced in this work allows automotive engineers to perform future work with modified latch components to further improve the psychoacoustic response of the automotive car door latch, further increasing the value evaluation of the automobile.