Advancements in Computer Simulation Methods for Vehicle Noise and Vibration

As vehicle development timeframes get continually shorter, the need for and use of computer simulation in the vehicle design and development cycle continues to increase. Computer simulation is used in almost all aspects of vehicle design, but with the current emphasis on vehicle comfort, it might be of greatest use for simulation of noise and vibration.

This paper outlines new simulation methods aimed at producing design direction that is both timely and correct. The methods focus on efficient generation and use of full vehicle system models for noise and vibration evaluation. Items discussed include:

• use of test data to represent one or more of the vehicle subsystems
• simulation of connectivity between subsystems at the concept stage, before design detail such as mount bracketry is available
• representation of mount nonlinearities in frequency domain simulations
• efficient representation of hydraulic mounts

In what follows, methods for implementation of each of these items into a vehicle system model are presented, along with example results.