An Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) based Methodology for Sound Package Optimization for Commercial Vehicles 2013-26-0104

In recent years NVH has gained a lot of importance in the commercial vehicle industry as it contributes significantly towards user comfort and also towards the quality perception associated with a vehicle. The in-cabin noise of vehicles is critical towards the comfort and usability for the end user and the sound package installed on the vehicle plays a vital role in determining the levels associated with this attribute, especially the high frequency content. The paper discusses a methodology for optimizing the sound package for performance, cost and mass, for a truck. The approach uses a Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) based optimization. A virtual SEA model is developed, which is correlated with actual test data. After establishing the correlation, an optimization study is carried out to identify the effectiveness of different materials and material combinations towards in-cabin noise. A metric, which takes into account a variety of factors, like performance, mass, cost etc., is used to rank various optimization iterations, thus providing the best alternatives from both a cost as well as a performance point of view for the given vehicles.