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Automotive OEMs are required to meet applicable regulations for exterior noise for vehicles they produce. Acceleration noise (typically called pass-by noise) regulations impose an upper limit for noise emission. In addition, vehicles which can operate without a combustion engine must comply with regulations for minimum noise emitted during low speed driving. In order to make regulation-compliant measurements for global destinations, a test track meeting requirements of ISO 10844 may be necessary. However, strictly meeting this requirement doesn’t guarantee a usable facility for efficient measurements. This paper describes design goals, challenges and construction of a regulation compliant facility in Arizona. The intent was to build a facility with a long usable life before requiring repaving, sufficient isolation from nearby test roads, 24-hour usability and onsite amenities to accommodate technical staffs and vehicle retrofits.

Vehicle interior wind noise is typically managed through the overall exterior geometry of the vehicle, mirror shape and mounting location, sealing features and glass thickness and damping. Prior research has distinguished between contribution of fluctuating pressure due to air turbulence as compared to acoustic pressure to a passenger vehicles exterior at highway speeds. Because of the large difference in propagation speed between turbulent and acoustic pressure for on-road passenger vehicles, the structural response of the glass to turbulent versus acoustic pressure is not the same. The acoustic coincidence frequency of door glass is typically in the 2-3 kHz range. Turbulent coincidence frequency is much lower, and the effective transmission loss (TL) of the glass depends on the mix of turbulent and acoustic pressure on the exterior surface of the glass.

Wind noise is becoming a higher priority in the automotive industry. Several past studies investigated whether Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) can be utilized to predict wind noise. Because wind noise analysis requires both radiation and transmission modeling in a wide frequency band, turbulent-structure-acoustic-coupled-SEA is being used. Past research investigated coupled-SEA’s benefit, but the model is usually simplified to enable easier consideration on the input side. However, the vehicle is composed of multiple interior parts and possible interior countermeasure consideration is needed. To enable this, at first, a more detailed coupled-SEA model is built from the acoustic-SEA model which has a larger number of degrees of freedom for the interior side. Then, the model is modified to account for sound radiation effects induced by turbulent and acoustic pressure.

The transmission of turbulent flow pressures through panels to the interior noise depends on the spatial matching of the pressure and vibration fields. Since the exterior pressure field on a moving vehicle includes both turbulent pressure and acoustic pressure, both need to be factored into a noise transmission loss calculation. However, these two exterior pressure fields have very different spatial patterns. This is further complicated when the exterior flow is separated from the surface due to an obstruction. This study uses wind tunnel and road tests to measure and model the wind noise transmission loss through the side glass of a vehicle. The results are seen to be very different from the traditional sound transmission loss curves for an acoustic pressure source.

In an effort to reduce mass, future automotive bodies will feature lower gage steel or lighter weight materials such as aluminum. An unfortunate side effect of lighter weight bodies is a reduction in sound transmission loss (TL). For barrier based systems, as the total system mass (including the sheet metal, decoupler, and barrier) goes down the transmission loss is reduced. If the reduced surface density from the sheet metal is added to the barrier, however, performance can be restored (though, of course, this eliminates the mass savings). In fact, if all of the saved mass from the sheet metal is added to the barrier, the TL performance may be improved over the original system. This is because the optimum performance for a barrier based system is achieved when the sheet metal and the barrier have equal surface densities. That is not the case for standard steel constructions where the surface density of the sheet metal is higher than the barrier.

Test standards are essential for evaluating the performance of a product properly and for developing a data base for the product. This paper discusses various standards that are available for determining the acoustical performance of sound package materials. The paper emphasizes various SAE standards that are available in this area, the reasons why these standards are important to the researchers working in the mobility industry, the history behind the development of these standards, and how they are different from standards that are available from other standards organization on similar topics.

Governmental regulations regarding exterior noise emitted by motor vehicles vary throughout the world. A vehicle which is compliant in one market may not be compliant in another market. In this case, a production North American class 8 truck was being prepared for sale overseas. The requirement to meet European Union (EU) pass-by regulations as tested per the EU standard meant development of a production feasible package to substantially reduce noise emissions without changing any fundamental design or operating parameters of the truck. The development testing was done on a chassis dynamometer in a hemi-anechoic chamber without any specific pass-by noise simulation software. Efforts to develop a reasonably accurate correlation from lab to track, use of acoustic beamforming for source localization and package design iterations leading to a final successful package are discussed.

The new Acoustic Technology Center (ATC) at E-A-R™ Thermal/Acoustic Systems is a purpose-built facility to serve the commercial vehicle, automotive, aircraft, industrial and electronics markets supplied by this company. The design was driven by test versatility and rigorous facility performance specifications, enabling simultaneous testing of heavy duty vehicles and high performance noise reduction materials and systems in adjacent but uncoupled chambers. The intent of the facility layout is to utilize space efficiently while allowing a wide variety of vehicle, subsystem, component and material tests. Working closely with E-A-R, Acoustical Consulting Services established critical facility parameters to achieve intended functional attributes and Affiliated Construction Services constructed the facility to these specifications.

Noise and vibration signals which are stationary are frequently analyzed for frequency content using Fourier Transform methods. Frequency content can be clearly displayed, but temporal characteristics of signals can easily be obscured in a frequency spectrum. Several commonly available methods of analyzing nonstationary signals are available, such as short-time Fourier Transform and wavelet analysis. Smearing of data in the time and/or frequency domains leads to limited usefulness of these methods in analyzing rapidly varying signals. This also applies to stationary signals with perceivable temporal characteristics. The Wigner Distribution is a time-frequency analysis which can analyze rapidly varying signals and show the effects of rapid changes in signal characteristics. It is appealing because it fully preserves all the information present in the original signal.