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Measurements of interior wind noise sound pressure level have shown that dBA and Loudness are not adequate metrics of wind noise sound quality due to non-stationary characteristics such as temporal modulation and impulse. A surface microphone array with high spatio-temporal resolution has been used to measure and analyze the corresponding non-stationary characteristics of the exterior aero-acoustic loading. Wavenumber filtering is used to observe the unsteady character of the low wavenumber aero-acoustic loading components most likely to be exciting glass vibration and transmitting sound.

The authors report on the design and application of a high resolution micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) microphone array for automotive wind noise engineering. The array integrates both sensors and random access memory (RAM) chips on a flexible circuit board that eliminates high channel count wiring and allows the array to be deployed on automobile surfaces in a convenient “stick-on/peel-off” configuration. These arrays have potential application to the quantitative evaluation of interior wind noise from measurements on a clay model in the wind tunnel, when used in conjunction with a body vibro-acoustic model. The array also provides a high resolution turbulence measurement tool, suitable for validation of computation fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for wind noise. The authors' report on the wavenumber-frequency structure of flow turbulence measured in different flow regions on a side glass and the corresponding contributions to interior wind noise.

It has been shown that internal transmission of wind noise is dependent on the external aerodynamic and acoustic excitation around the automobile. Flow over the A-pillar and side-view mirror induces strongly convecting turbulence and associated acoustics which excite the side-glass. A useful tool to understand and quantify these physics is to perform temporal Fourier analysis (auto-spectra) and spatial Fourier analysis (cross-spectra and wave-number decomposition). This study demonstrates the uses of wave-number decomposition to quantify the mechanisms associated with turbulent convection and acoustical propagation. A CFD computation using the commercial codes STAR-CCM+ is performed for the flow over a generalized side-view mirror in a freestream of 38m/s. LES-enabled turbulence is solved in a fully compressible framework so as to capture all the local acoustical propagation well beyond 3kHz.