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During the pure electric vehicle high speed cruise driving condition, the unsteady air flow in the chassis cavity is susceptible to self-sustaining oscillations phenomenon. And the aerodynamic oscillation excitation could be coupled with the cabin interior acoustic mode through the body pressure relief vent, the low frequency booming noise may occur and seriously reduces the driving comfort. This paper systematically introduces the characteristics identification and the troubleshooting process of the low frequency aerodynamic noise case. Firstly, combined with the characteristics of the subjective jury evaluation and objective measurement, the acoustic wind tunnel test restores the cabin booming phenomenon. The specific test procedure is proposed to separate the noise excitation source.

Compared with the low-frequency ignition order of mechanical and combustion noise of an internal combustion engine, the noise of electric drive assembly of electric vehicles is mainly the high-frequency whining noise generated by electromagnetic forces of motors and gear meshing of reducers, as well as the high-frequency umbrella-shape noise generated by DC/AC pulse width modulation. Although the radiated sound power of these high frequency noise is far less than that of an internal combustion engine, the high frequency noise of the motor and the reducer is subjectively quite annoying. This paper studies the characteristics of electromagnetic noise of a permanent magnet synchronous motor in an electric car. By testing and analyzing of noise sources of an electric motor in the car and on a test rig, the spatial order characteristics and amplitude-frequency characteristics of the electromagnetic forces are revealed. The noise orders are multiples of the number of motor poles.

Tire cavity noise refers to the vehicle noise due to the excitation of the acoustic modes of a tire air cavity. Although two lowest acoustic modes are found to be sufficient to characterize the cavity dynamics, the dynamical response of these two modes is complicated by two major factors. First, the tire cavity geometry is affected by the static load applied to the tire due to vehicle weight. Second, the excitation force from the tire-road contact changes position as the tire rotates. In this paper, we first develop dynamic equations for the lowest cavity modes of a rotating tire under the static load. Based on the model, we obtain the forces transmitted to the wheel from the tire resulting from the random contact force between the tire and the road surface. The transmitted forces along the fore/aft direction and the vertical direction show two peaks at frequencies that are dependent both on the tire static load and on the vehicle speed.

This paper presents an innovative method of simulating tire non-uniformity forces for vehicle vibration sensitivity tests. The method utilizes a patented mechanical device to produce a vertical or tangential force independently at a vehicle wheel spindle to simulate the excitation generated by tire non-uniformity forces. Using this device in vehicle vibration sensitivity tests, the amplitude of a vertical force can be set at a desired level without inducing a tangential force; and vice versa for a tangential force. Therefore, the vehicle vibration sensitivity to the vertical or tangential forces can be tested respectively without the confounded effect of other direction excitation. This method eliminates the time and cost associated with tire sorting and provides an effective and reliable testing approach to measure vehicle vibration sensitivity due to tire non-uniformity forces.

Tire cavity noise refers to the excitation of the acoustic mode of a tire cavity. The noise exhibits itself as sharp resonance-like peaks with frequencies typically in the range of 190-250Hz. For a rolling tire, the tire contact with the road moves relative to the tire. Furthermore, the load on the tire breaks the circular symmetry of the tire. Consequently, the peak frequency of the cavity noise shows dependence on the tire load and the vehicle speed. There are no models that simultaneously take these two factors into consideration. In this paper, we propose an analytical model and present experimental verifications of predictions on the noise peak frequency and its dependence on the tire load and vehicle speed. A wireless experimental measurement system is also presented which enables the measurement of tire cavity frequency for both non-rolling and rolling conditions.

The steering wheel is one of the primary sensory inputs for vehicle vibration while driving. Past research on hand-arm vibration has focused on a hand gripping a rod or a hand on a flat plate. Little work has focused on the perception of vibration felt through an automotive steering wheel. This paper discusses the investigation conducted at Ford's Vehicle Vibration Simulator Lab to develop equal annoyance contours for hand-arm vibration. These contours were developed for four different degrees-of-freedom: vertical, lateral, longitudinal and rotation about the steering wheel center. Rotation about the steering wheel is commonly induced by a 1st order tire non-uniformity force and imbalance of the wheel/tire. These 1st order excitation forces generate vibration in the frequency range of 8-20 Hz.

When driving or riding in a vehicle, the customer is bombarded with sensory stimuli. These include tactile, auditory, olfactory and visual. In addition, the customer may be asked to perform various routine driving tasks that can have an influence on the perception of each of the aforementioned senses. Or perhaps, the influence of one sense may affect the perception of another. Since sound rarely occurs void of felt vibration and vice-versa, there is reason to believe one may influence the perception of the other, or that the two may interact in some way when the customer is exposed to a particular NVH (Noise Vibration and Harshness) event in a vehicle. The NVH engineer wishes to gage a sound or vibration's impact on the customer and make a determination as to whether corrective actions on the vehicle are necessary. NVH issues routinely show up as top warranty and customer satisfaction concerns.

Past studies have shown that NVH CAE tire model quality is not adequate to correctly capture a mid-frequency range (100-300 Hz). A new methodology has been developed to estimate tire forces that are independent of dynamic characteristics of vehicle suspension and rig test fixture. The forces are called tire blocked forces and defined as a force generated by a tire/wheel system whose boundary condition is constrained. The tire blocked force is estimated by removing the dynamic effect of the tire force measurement fixture. The blocked forces can be applied to CAE models to predict vehicle road NVH responses. This new method can also be used as a target setting tool. Tire suppliers can check the blocked tire forces from the rig testing data against a force target before they submit tires to automotive manufacturers for evaluations on a prototype vehicle.

Transient road disturbances excite complex vehicle responses involving the interaction of suspension/chassis, powertrain, and body systems. Typical ones are due to the interactions between tires and road expansion joints, railway crossings and other road discontinuities. Such transient disturbances are generally perceived as “impact harshness” due to the harshness perception as sensed by drivers through both sound and vibration. This paper presents a study of quantifying the effects of sound, steering wheel and seat/floorpan vibrations on the overall perception of the “impact harshness” during impact transient events. The Vehicle Vibration Simulator (VVS) of the Ford Research Laboratory was used to conduct this study. The results of the study show that sound and vibration have approximately equal impact on the overall perception of impact harshness. There is no evidence of interaction between sound and vibration.

Impact harshness characterizes interior sound and vibration resulting from tire interactions with discrete road disturbances. Typical interactions are expansion joints, railroad crossings, and other road discontinuities at low-to-medium vehicle speeds. One goal of the current study was to validate for light trucks and SUVs the metric that was developed for cars: a weighted combination of peak loudness values from the front and rear impacts after lowpass filtering at 1 kHz. Another goal was to see if other sound characteristics of impact harshness needed to be captured with a metric. A listening study was conducted with participants evaluating several different trucks and SUVs for impact harshness. Results show that the existing metric correlates well with subjective preferences for most of the vehicles.

The performance of structure-borne road NVH can be cascaded down to three major systems: 1) vehicle body structure, 2) chassis/suspension, 3) tire/wheel. The forces at the body attachment points are controlled by the isolation efficiency of the chassis/suspension system and the excitation at the spindle/knuckle due to the tire/road interaction. The chassis force transmissibility is a metric to quantify the isolation efficiency. This paper presents a new experimental methodology to estimate the chassis force transmissibility from a fully assembled vehicle. For the calculation of the transmissibility, the spindle force/moment estimation and the conventional Noise Path Analysis (NPA) methodologies are utilized. A merit of the methodology provides not only spindle force to body force transmissibility but also spindle moment to body force transmissibility. Hence it enables us to understand the effectiveness of the spindle moments on the body forces.

A new experimental methodology has been developed to quantify spindle loads of a vehicle under actual operational conditions. The methodology applies an indirect six degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) frequency response function (FRF) measurement technique to obtain three translation/force and three rotation/moment FRFs of the suspension system of the vehicle. The Inverse Frequency Response Function (IFRF) method estimates the spindle loads under operational conditions. The feasibility and applicability of the developed methodology for vehicle road NVH applications was experimentally demonstrated. The results show that the methodology provides accurate spindle load estimation over a broad frequency range. This methodology can be used for benchmarking and target setting of spindle loads to achieve desired road NVH performance as well as for diagnosing root causes in problem solving applications.