A Novel Transfer Path Analysis Method Delivering a Fast and Accurate Noise Contribution Assessment

15 years of NVH applications make Transfer Path Analysis (TPA) appear a commodity tool. But despite the fact that TPA is today successfully used in a large variety of applications in automotive and mechanical industries, its main bottleneck remains the huge measurement time to build the full TPA model. This paper presents a new TPA method that provides a good compromise between path accuracy and measurement time. The method is also referred to as OPAX. The key idea of OPAX is the use of simplified parametric load models with limited number of model parameters. The main advantage of this is that one should measure only a small amount of FRF data to identify the operational loads. This drastically reduces measurement time and efforts. In addition to this, the OPAX method does not require mount stiffness data and allows a simultaneous identification of structural and acoustic paths. The paper first briefly reviews the main principles of OPAX and then compares the method with other concurrent TPA methods, first on an experimental setup and then also on a real vehicle.