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Flow-generated noise has recently received a lot of attention within the process of designing exhaust and intake systems. Flow-generated noise can limit the amount of sound reduction a muffler can introduce inside ducts. This is more important in the modern system design where mufflers are compact and the flow speeds become higher in different sections inside the muffler. In this paper, three measurement techniques are used to measure the flow-generated noise from a duct element. The first is based on calculating the sound power levels inside a reverberation room according to ISO 3741. The radiated noise is measured from the muffler body as a source of noise, then from the tail pipe as an active one-port source. The second is based on sound power measurements inside the ducts using the active two-port theory. The third is measuring the sound pressure radiation inside an anechoic room.

A novel porous metallic foam has been studied in this work. This composite material is a mixture of resin and hollow spheres. It is lightweight, highly resistive to contamination and heat, and is capable of providing similar or better sound absorption compared to the conventional porous absorbers, but with a robust and less degradable properties. Several configurations of the material have been tested inside an expansion chamber with spatially periodic area changes. Bragg scattering was observed in some configurations with certain lattice constants. The acoustic properties of this material have been characterized from the measurement of the two-port matrix across a cylindrical sample. The complex density and speed of sound can be extracted from the transfer matrix using an optimization technique. Several models were developed to validate the effect of this metallic foam using Finite Elements and the Two-port Theory.

In several applications, two-inlet single-outlet mufflers are possible to encounter in exhaust systems. They are usually used to merge two exhaust streams from two similar engines or from two sides of an engine. They have an advantage of reducing the back pressure on the engine(s). There is a lot of published research on the analysis of single-inlet single-outlet mufflers acting as a two-port. On the other hand, there are a few publications on the analysis of two-inlet single-outlet mufflers due to their complexity representing a three-port. A three-port is characterized by a 3×3 Scattering Matrix. The nine elements of this matrix represent the 3 reflection coefficients at each port, and the 6 transmission coefficients between the 3 ports in both directions. In this work, a two-inlet single-outlet muffler is studied. The elements of the scattering matrix were measured using the two-source two-microphone technique with and without flow.

Exhaust noise is a major contributor to the radiated noise level of a vehicle, especially at idle. The radiated noise level has to meet a certain criteria based on regulation and consumer demand. In many cases, the problem appears after the vehicle is manufactured and the tailpipe noise measurement is performed indicating a high noise level that needs to be reduced. This paper describes one of those cases where the radiated noise level of a certain passenger car at idle was required to be reduced by 6 dB(A). The exhaust system consists of one main muffler and one auxiliary muffler. A 1D two-port model of the exhaust system including the two mufflers was built using commercial software. This model was validated against the measurement of the two-port matrix of both mufflers. The model was then used together with tailpipe noise measurements to estimate the characteristics of the source strength and impedance.

In many industries, muffler and silencer design is primarily accomplished via trial and error. Prototypes are developed and tested, or numerical simulation (finite or boundary element analysis) is used to assess the performance. While these approaches reliably determine the transmission loss, designers often do not understand why their changes improve or degrade the muffler performance. Analyses are time consuming and models cannot be changed without some effort. The intent of the current work is to demonstrate how plane wave muffler models can be used in industry. It is first demonstrated that plane wave models can reliably determine the transmission loss for complicated mufflers below the cutoff frequency. Some tips for developing dependable plane wave models are summarized. Moreover, it is shown that plane wave models used correctly help designers develop intuition and a better understanding of the effect of their design changes.

Diesel engines produce harmful exhaust emissions and high exhaust noise levels. One way of mitigating both exhaust emissions and noise is via the use of after treatment devices such as Catalytic Converters (CC), Selective Catalytic Reducers (SCR), Diesel Oxidation Catalysts (DOC), and Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF). The objective of this investigation is to characterize and simulate the acoustic performance of different types of filters so that maximum benefit can be achieved. A number of after treatment device configurations for trucks were selected and measured. A measurement campaign was conducted to characterize the two-port transfer matrix of these devices. The simulation was performed using the two-port theory where the two-port models are limited to the plane wave range in the filter cavity.

This paper documents a finite element approach to predict the attenuation of muffler and silencer systems that incorporate diesel particulate filters (DPF). Two finite element models were developed. The first is a micro FEM model, where a subset of channels is modeled and transmission matrices are determined in a manner consistent with prior published work by Allam and Åbom. Flow effects are considered at the inlet and outlet to the DPF as well as viscous effects in the channels themselves. The results are then used in a macro FEM model of the exhaust system where the transmission relationship from the micro-model is used to simulate the DPF. The modeling approach was validated experimentally on an example in which the plane wave cutoff frequency was exceeded in the chambers upstream and downstream to the DPF.