Coupled-SEA Application to Full Vehicle with Numerical Turbulent Model Excitation for Wind Noise Improvement

Wind noise is becoming a higher priority in the automotive industry. Several past studies investigated whether Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) can be utilized to predict wind noise. Because wind noise analysis requires both radiation and transmission modeling in a wide frequency band, turbulent-structure-acoustic-coupled-SEA is being used. Past research investigated coupled-SEA’s benefit, but the model is usually simplified to enable easier consideration on the input side. However, the vehicle is composed of multiple interior parts and possible interior countermeasure consideration is needed. To enable this, at first, a more detailed coupled-SEA model is built from the acoustic-SEA model which has a larger number of degrees of freedom for the interior side. Then, the model is modified to account for sound radiation effects induced by turbulent and acoustic pressure. Another concern about utilizing the coupled-SEA to wind noise development is the estimation of the turbulent and acoustic input. Several options are available for identifying the input, such as on-road data measurement, CFD simulation, and numerical turbulent model estimation. Because the turbulent model can be helpful to consider the countermeasure direction, the turbulent model application to coupled-SEA is considered. However, an appropriate turbulent model is still unclear whereas there are many kinds of turbulent models proposed. Due to this, as the next step, this paper performs a validation study in a wind tunnel to identify the suitable turbulent model for the wind noise simulation. Lastly, the entire method is validated with on-road measurements. A detailed coupled-SEA model under appropriate turbulent model input simulates test case conditions and its prediction accuracy is discussed along with a wind noise.