Models and comparisons for the evaluation of the sound transmission loss of panels

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to present the numerical evaluation of the sound transmission loss of some simple panel configurations and to compare them to the theoretical and experimental data found in existing literature. The numerical evaluations are carried out through the commercial software VA-One®. Specifically, single and double panels of different materials and configurations are investigated and thus the possibility to build good predictive numerical models is verified. The panels refer to the common automotive and aerospace configurations. An analysis of foam lined panels is presented, too. The numerous test cases can be considered as benchmarks for the simulations obtained with the statistical energy analysis. The agreements are very good and thus, statistical energy analysis represents a mature predictive methodology for this kind of simulations. Nevertheless, some care is always needed to select among the different simulation strategies for given specific configurations. The results are eventually cross-compared in order to highlight the configurations which are more promising for further investigations; this has been done by introducing a dimensionless frequency.