Copyright © 2011 S. M. Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In order to predict the interior noise of the automobile in the low and middle frequency band in the design and development stage, the hybrid FE-SEA model of an automobile was created using hybrid FE-SEA method. The modal density was calculated using analytical method and finite element method; the damping loss factors of the structural and acoustic cavity subsystems were also calculated with analytical method; the coupling loss factors between structure and structure, structure and acoustic cavity were both calculated. Four different kinds of excitations including road excitations, engine mount excitations, sound radiation excitations of the engine, and wind excitations are exerted on the body of automobile when the automobile is running on the road. All the excitations were calculated using virtual prototype technology, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and experiments realized in the design and development stage. The interior noise of the automobile was predicted and verified at speed of 120 km/h. The predicted and tested overall SPLs of the interior noise were 73.79 and 74.44 dB(A) respectively. The comparison results also show that the prediction precision is satisfied, and the effectiveness and reliability of the hybrid FE-SEA model of the automobile is verified.