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Tire/Road noise is a dominant contribution to a vehicle interior noise and requires significant engineering resources during vehicle development. A process has been developed to support automotive OEMs with road noise engineering during vehicle design and development which has test as its basis but takes advantage of simulation to virtually accelerate road noise improvement. The process uses airborne noise sources measured on a single tire installed on a test stand. The measured sources are then combined with vehicle level transfer functions calculated using a Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) model to predict the sound at the driver ears. The process can be applied from the early stages of a vehicle development program and allows the evaluation of vehicle road noise performance as perceived by the driver long before the first prototype is available. This process is also extensible to other types of sources and loads impacting vehicle interior acoustics.

A manufacturer of automotive equipment set out to implement a process to include sound and vibration quality targets for powertrain and road noise. CAE models have been successfully used in the early phase of the vehicle development process, but the use of these models to assess the customer’s subjective sound and vibration experience is often missing. The goal here was to use a CAE model driven by sound and vibration quality targets for early identification of problem areas based on jurors’ preference. These quality targets were cascaded via Source-Path-Contribution (SPC), and optimizations were performed to meet the targets using the CAE model.

An important factor contributing to a customer’s subjective perception of a vehicle, particularly at the point-of-purchase, is the sound created by the passenger doors during closure events. Although these sounds are very short in duration the key systems that control the sounds produced can be highly coupled. Similarly, the necessary efforts required to understand key design criteria affecting the sound can also be highly complex. Within this paper sub-systems affecting the door closure sound are evaluated to understand key structural properties and behaviors toward the contribution to the overall sound produced. This begins with the subjective preferences of typical sounds and the difficulties with both measuring and reproducing these sounds appropriately and leads directly to the target setting and target cascading process.

A unique Matlab-based coded engineering software tool (Time-Frequency Analyzer Core®) was developed that allows users to process acquired time data to help in identifying sources and paths of noise and vibration (in the experience of the authors). The Time-Frequency Analyzer Core (TFAC) software does not replace commercial off the shelf software/hardware NV specific tools such as modal analysis, ODS, acoustic mapping, order tracking, etc., rather it aims at providing basic, yet powerful data inspection and comparison techniques in a single software tool that facilitates drawing conclusions and identifying most effective next steps. The features and advantages of using this software tool will be explained, along with a description of its application to a few different cases (automotive and off highway/agricultural).