An Acoustic Indirect Variational Boundary Element Formulation and Its Applications in Cab Design and Acoustic Radiation Problems

An indirect variational boundary element formulation and two typical applications are presented in this paper. The significance of this method is that it can include openings in the model, and it considers the acoustic medium on both sides. Computationally it is superior to the direct method because the assembled fully populated boundary element matrices are symmetric. The theoretical background is presented. A typical generic interior cab noise analysis is performed. The excitation is comprised by an exterior impinging acoustic field and loads applied at the mounts. The coupled option was selected to solve this problem. A typical acoustic uncoupled radiation analysis is also performed. The noise radiated from a T-drive is computed and the solution time is compared to the direct method.