Virtual Powertrain Swap for Interactive NVH and Sound Quality Evaluation

Powertrain NVH and Powertrain Sound Quality requirements are among the key attributes to meet when developing new engines or vehicles. Source-Path-Contribution (SPC) solutions are commonly used to support the vehicle design and development. They allow to quantify the relative contributions of the different excitation sources, whether airborne or structure-borne, and the transfer paths to the noise and vibration measured at the receiver locations. When performed in time domain, SPC analysis is also a very effective tool to evaluate interactively the powertrain Sound Quality and how it can be affected by design changes. In this paper, we present a joint project performed by B&K Global Engineering Services together with Subaru where the team leveraged SPC models for powertrain noise of existing vehicles to create a new virtual vehicle assembly when the powertrain from the first vehicle is installed in the body of the second vehicle. We describe the process followed to perform such a virtual powertrain swap including a description of all the measurements performed on the baseline vehicles, the development of the SPC model for powertrain noise in time domain and how we switched the vehicle bodies. We will also present how the team used B&K’s NVH Simulator for the interactive evaluation of the powertrain Sound Quality of the new virtual vehicle.