Sound Quality Evaluation of Noise of Hub Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motors for Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The existing evaluation methods and indexes of noise of electric motors cannot comprehensively reflect all the physical characteristics of noise of hub permanent-magnet synchronous motors (HPMSM) and human subjective sensations. In this paper, a method of the sound quality (SQ) evaluation of HPMSM for electric vehicles is proposed. The method is divided into three steps. In the first step, a noise objective evaluation of HPMSM with seven acoustical objective indexes, including loudness, roughness, A-weighted sound pressure level (A-W SPL), tonality, sharpness, articulation index (AI), and fluctuation strength, is made. In the second step, a noise subjective evaluation of HPMSM by using the grade evaluation method is made. The subjective annoyances (SA) of noise samples of HPMSM are obtained. In the last step, the SQ evaluation model of HPMSM by using the BP neural network theory is established. The average error rate of the proposed model is only 3.97%. By means of weight analysis, a comparison between the relative importance of acoustical objective parameters is found out. The main original contribution of this paper is that the proposed method can comprehensively reflect all the physical sound characteristics of HPMSM as well as their influence on human subjective sensations.