Acoustic Three Dimensional Finite Element Analysis of a Muffler

Three dimensional finite element analysis of mufflers has been carried out using ANSYS general purpose program. Analysis of simple expansion chamber muffler, extended tube muffler, tapered chamber muffler, offset chamber muffler and flow reversing chamber muffler has been carried out to predict the transmission loss. This three dimensional FEA technique has proved to be successful for the analysis of geometrically complicated mufflers where one dimensional theories can not be used. Parametric analysis of a simple expansion chamber muffler has been carried out to study the effect of expansion ratio, expansion chamber length, number of partitions within a chamber and unequal partitions. Analysis of acoustic cavity of a simple expansion chamber muffler has also been carried out to predict the natural frequencies and acoustic mode shapes.