Design and simulation of Helmholtz resonator assembly used to attenuate tire acoustic cavity resonance noise

Abstract

Tire acoustic cavity resonance noise (TACRN) is a typical annoying lower-frequency interior noise of a passenger car. The widely used attenuating method of attaching the porous sound absorption material in tire cavity can reduce TACRN effectively, but causes the increase of tire-wheel assembly weight and cost, also the poor durability. Additionally, the Helmholtz resonator (HR) is also used in the wheel of some cars although having only narrow effective band. The existing investigation shows that the frequency of TACRN varies with the car speed and load and also has the split characteristics. The change of TACRN frequency causes a certain difficulty to suppress TACRN effectively. Aiming at this problem, in this paper, TACRN frequency range of a specific tire cavity under different operating conditions is first calculated and analyzed. Then, for a specific aluminum alloy wheel, a HR assembly including several HRs is designed to make the natural frequencies of HR assembly cover the TACRN frequencies. Finally, the reduction effect of TACRN is simulated and evaluated by comparing the sound fields in tire cavity with/without HR assembly under same volume velocity sound source. This work is helpful for attenuating TACRN effectively under the changing operating conditions.