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Lightweight structures and designs have been widely used in a number of engineered structures due to ecological and environmental aspects. Nonetheless, lightweight structures typically experience a reduced noise and vibration reduction performance as a consequence of their increased stiffness-to-mass-ratio. To enhance it, novel low mass and compact countermeasures are often sought to address the challenges of achieving not only a good Noise, Vibrations and Harshness (NVH) reduction performance but also maintaining a lightweight design. Recently, locally resonant metamaterials have emerged and shown potential as a lightweight noise and vibration solution with a superior performance in tunable frequency ranges, known as stop bands i.e. frequency regions where free wave propagation is not allowed. These can be achieved by assembling resonant elements that are tuned to the targeted frequency range onto a host structure.

This paper demonstrates the application of a resonant metamaterial concept to tyres in order to reduce structure-borne tyre/road noise. Special attention is given to the frequency range around 220Hz, containing the first acoustic tyre resonances. These resonances are known to transmit high forces to the wheel-knuckle, leading to structural energy propagating into the vehicle’s body and, consequently, causing a tonal noise issue in the vehicle compartment. By adding recycled rubber resonant elements to the inner liner of the tyre, structural stop band behaviour is achieved in the frequency band of interest. Hence, structural vibrations in the tyre are reduced, resulting in a reduction of the excitation of the first acoustic tyre resonances and, consequently, a mitigation of the transmitted forces to the wheel-knuckle. First, the stop band behaviour is designed via unit cell modelling of a section of a tyre mock-up that only accounts for its structural behaviour.

The NVH optimization of new vehicle models can in principle only be carried out in a relatively late stage of the development process, when the geometrical data (CAD) are available and can be used to generate detailed Finite Element (FE) models of the car body. Unfortunately, in this stage of the development process most of the geometrical data are already fixed and countermeasures are limited and expensive. In order to be able to evaluate design concepts in an earlier conceptual stage of the development process existing models of similar predecessor vehicles must be used leading to techniques such as “mesh-morphing” or “concept modelling” (see for instance [1, 2]). Here, a different approach is investigated based on a substructuring technique.

Vibration testing is often carried out for automotive components to meet guidelines based on their operational environments. This is an iterative process wherein design changes may need to be made depending on an intermediate model’s dynamic behavior. Predicting the behavior based on modifications in boundary conditions of a well-defined numerical model imparts practical insights to the component’s responses. To this end, application of a general method using experimental free-free condition frequency response functions of a structure is discussed in the presented work. The procedure is shown to be useful for prediction of responses when kinematic boundary conditions are applied, without the need for an actual measurement. This approach is outlined in the paper and is applied to datasets where dynamic modifications are made at multiple boundary nodes.

In tire development, the dynamic tire-road contact forces are an important indicator to assess structure-borne interior cabin noise. This type of noise is the dominant source in the frequency range from 50-450 Hz, especially when rolling with constant angular velocity on a rough road. The spatial force distribution is difficult or sometimes even impossible to simulate or measure in practice. So, the use of an inverse technique is proposed. This technique uses response measurements in combination with a digital twin simulation model to obtain the input forces in an inverse way. The responses and model properties are expressed in the time domain, since it is specifically aimed to trace back the impact locations from road surface texture indents on the tire. In order to do so, the transient responses of the travelling waves as a result of these impacts is used. The framework expresses responses as a convolution product of the unknown loads and impulse response measurements.

Experimental modal analysis (EMA) is a measurement technique to assess the dynamical properties of mechanical components and systems in various phases of their life cycle, e.g. for design, end-of-line testing and health monitoring. The most common EMA uses accelerometers, which provide high frequency acceleration measurements at a few discrete locations. However, attached accelerometers may alter the systems mass and damping properties and multiple tests are required to obtain spatially dense information. To overcome these issues, in this paper we use high-speed cameras and video processing algorithms. In fact, cameras as contact-less sensors do not modify the dynamics of the system under test. Furthermore, cameras provide full-field displacement data, allowing to obtain spatially dense transfer functions with a single excitation, which reduces the experiment duration.

Stringent regulations for CO2 emissions and noise pollution reduction demand lighter and improved Noise, Vibration Harshness (NVH) solutions in automotive industries. Designing light, compact and, at the same time, improved NVH solutions is often a challenge, as low noise and vibration levels often require heavy and bulky additions, especially to be effective in the low frequency regime. Recently, locally resonant metamaterials have emerged among the novel NVH solutions because of their performant NVH properties combined with lightweight and compact design. Due to the characteristic of stop band behavior, frequency ranges where free wave propagation is inhibited, metamaterials can beat the mass law, be it at least in some tunable frequency ranges. Previously the authors demonstrated how metamaterials can reduce the vibrations in a simplified shock tower upon shaker excitation. In this work, the authors apply the metamaterial concept on the real rear shock towers of a vehicle.

In current practice, tire development and testing are typically experimentally driven. However, as the need to simultaneously optimize multiple noise vibration and harshness (NVH) performance criteria increases and development cycles become shorter, predictive numerical simulation techniques are becoming necessary. In addition, many tire performance areas are coupled and therefore the experimental approach often lacks detailed insights which numerical simulations can provide. Currently, no industrially applicable fully predictive high-fidelity numerical approach that incorporates the use of nonlinear Finite Element (FE) tire models for NVH design is available in literature. Therefore, a fully predictive numerical simulation approach that predicts the rolling of a tire over a coarse road surface is described in this work. The proposed approach allows to predict the dynamic contact- and hub forces that arise during rolling without the need for experimental data.

The combination of lightweight design and performant Noise, Vibrations Harshness (NVH) solutions has gained a lot of importance over the past decades. Lightweight design complies with the ever more stringent environmental requirements, however conflicts with NVH performance, as low noise and vibration levels often require heavy and bulky systems, especially at low frequencies. To face this challenge, locally resonant metamaterials come to the fore as low mass, compact volume NVH solutions, beating the mass law in some tunable frequency zones, referred to as stopbands. Metamaterials are artificial materials made from assemblies of unit cells of non-homogeneous material composition and/or topology. The local interaction between unit cells leads to superior performance in terms of noise and vibration reduction with respect to the conventional NVH treatments. Previously the authors showed how wave propagation along one-dimensional structures can be reduced by metamaterial additions.

A large number of testing procedures have been developed to ensure vehicle safety in common and extreme driving situations. However, these conventional testing procedures are insufficient for testing autonomous vehicles. They have to handle unexpected scenarios with the same or less risk a human driver would take. Currently, safety related systems are not adequately tested, e.g. in collision avoidance scenarios with pedestrians. Examples are the change of pedestrian behaviour caused by interaction, environmental influences and personal aspects, which cannot be tested in real environments. It is proposed to use augmented reality techniques. This method can be seen as a new (Augmented) Pedestrian in the Loop testing procedure.

The continuous pursuit for lighter, more affordable and more silent cars, has pushed OEMs into optimizing the design of car components. The different panels surrounding the car interior cavity such as firewall, door or floor panels are of key importance to the NV performance. The design of the sound packages for high-frequency airborne input is well established. However, the design for the mid-frequency range is more difficult, because of the complex inputs involved, the lack of representative performance metrics and its high computational cost. In order to make early decisions for package design, performance maps based on the different design parameters are desired for mid-frequencies. This paper presents a framework to retrieve the response surface, from a numerical design space of finite-element frequency sweeps. This response surface describes the performance of a sound package against the different design variables.

The NVH performance of conventional panels and structures is mainly driven by their mass. Silence often requires heavy constructions, which conflicts with the emerging trend towards lightweight design. To face the challenging and often conflicting task of merging NVH and lightweight requirements, novel low mass and compact volume NVH solutions are required. Vibro-acoustic metamaterials with stopband behavior come to the fore as possible novel NVH solutions combining lightweight requirements with superior noise and vibration insulation, be it at least in some targeted and tunable frequency ranges, referred to as stopbands. Metamaterials are artificial materials or structures engineered from conventional materials to exhibit some targeted performance that clearly exceeds that of conventional materials. They consist typically of (often periodic) assemblies of unit cells of non-homogeneous material composition and/or topology.

This paper proposes a specific parametric model order reduction (pMOR) scheme for the efficient evaluation of beam based structures. The model to be parameterized is a Finite Element (FE) model that represents a generic network of beams with a number of distinct cross-section types. The methodology considers geometrical parameters that describe the cross-section and the material properties of the beams as the design parameters of interest. An affine representation of the model is derived based on the description of the deformation of a uniform beam. This affine representation can be exploited for the hyper-reduction where the evaluation cost of the system matrices is reduced. The reduction of the system matrices is obtained through a projection based approach. For a given number of parameter combinations a modal basis is constructed. A global reduced order basis (ROB) is obtained through a principal component analysis of these local bases.

Active vibration reduction for lightweight structures has attracted more and more attention in automotive industries. In this paper, reduced-order controllers are designed based on H∞ techniques to realize vibration reduction. A finite element model of piezo-based smart structure is constructed from which a nominal model containing 5 modes and validation model containing 10 modes are extracted. A mixed-sensitivity robust H∞ controller is firstly designed based on the nominal structural model. Considering the ease of controller deployment, an order reduction for the controller is then exploited using balanced truncation method. The effectiveness of the reduced-order controller is finally verified on the validation model via system simulations.

In the context of the reduction of traffic-related noise the research reported in this paper provides tools that could be used to develop low noise tyres. Two measurement techniques have been analyzed for exterior noise radiation characterization of a loaded rotating slick tyre on a rough road surface. On one hand sound pressure measurements at low spatial resolution with strategically placed microphones on a half-hemisphere around the tyre/road contact point have been performed. This technique provides a robust solution to compute the (overall) sound power level. On the other hand sound intensity measurements at high spatial resolution by means of a scanning intensity probe have been performed. This technique allows a more detailed spatial visualization of the noise radiation and helps in getting more insight and better understanding of the acoustical phenomena.

The objective of the present study is to experimentally characterize the drag torque in open multi-disks wet clutches. For this purpose, two groups of experiments are performed using an advanced SAE#2 test setup. The experiments are designed under real conditions of variable automatic transmission fluid (ATF) flow rate and higher clutch speed range as experienced by wet clutches in real operation. The first test group examines the influence of parameters such as ATF flow rate, ATF temperature, and disks size whereas, the second test group investigates the effect of disks rotational conditions on the drag torque. By analyzing, the obtained experimental results, the relationship between the amount by which the parameters are varied and the corresponding change in the drag torque are established. In addition, a general qualitative behavior of the drag torque as function of clutch speed is proposed and the associated physical phenomena are explained.

Maximizing the acoustic attenuation is one of the important design criteria of automotive exhaust systems. Although both analytical and numerical approaches exist to evaluate the acoustic transmission properties of exhaust systems, they are, at present, insufficient to model the full geometrical complexity and to accurately assess the influence of thermal and aerodynamic phenomena onto the acoustic attenuation characteristics. For this reason, an experimental test campaign is often still indispensable to evaluate the aeroacoustic performance of exhaust systems. One of the most commonly used experimental characterization techniques for flow duct systems is the two-port characterization.

In many industrial applications, such as in the automotive and machine building industry, there is a continuous push towards lightweight materials motivated by material and energy savings. This increased use of lightweight materials, however, can strongly compromise the Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) performance of the final products. Especially in times where the NVH performance not only receives a higher legislative attention, but also becomes a commercial differentiator, this also represents a key point of attention for designers and directs research activities towards new experimental and numerical techniques to accurately predict the NVH performance of lightweight systems as early as possible in the design process. The presented work discusses novel measurement setup, specifically developed for examining the vibro-acoustic behavior of lightweight structures. The test stand consists of a concrete cavity of 0.83 m₃.

The investigation of critical noise sources on pass-by noise tests is demanding development of the current techniques in order to locate and quantify these sources. One recent approach is to use beamforming techniques to this purpose. The phased array information can be processed using several methods, for example, conventional delay-and-sum algorithms, deconvolution based algorithms, such as DAMAS, and more recently, the generalized inverse beamforming. This later method, presents the advantage of separating coherent sources with better dynamic range than conventional beamforming. Also, recent developments, such as Iteratively Re-Weigthing Least Squares, increases the localization accuracy allowing it to be used in a challenging problem as a fast moving source detection, a non-stationary condition. The work will raise the main advantages and disadvantages on this method using a practical case, a passenger vehicle pass-by test.

Prediction of the drive-by noise level in the early design stage of an automotive vehicle is feasible if the source signatures and source-receiver transfer functions may be determined from simulations based on the available CAD/CAE models. This paper reports on the performance of a drive-by noise synthesis procedure in which the transfer functions are numerically evaluated by employing the Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method (FMBEM). The proposed synthesis procedure first computes the steady-state receiver contributions of the sources as appearing from a number of vehicle positions along the drive path. In a second step, these contributions are then combined into a single transient signal from a moving vehicle for each source-receiver pair by means of a travel time correction.