Analysis of Door Seal Compression and its Influence on NVH Performance in Heavy-Duty Vehicle

Seals in a truck cabin is one of the major contributors for cabin noise in terms of structure borne as well as air borne noise transfer path. This study emphasizes on the effect of door seal compression prediction and its impact on structure borne NVH in trucks. Vibrations are regarded as quality criteria in the perception of customers. It is necessary to ascertain the contribution of seal stiffness on compression of the seal under closed condition of the door rather than uncompressed conditions. The dynamic stiffness of door seal is calculated by non-linear analysis. The simulations models are constructed using the Mooney - Rivlin theory for both 2D and 3D seals. This encompasses contemplating the relevant seal mounted boundary condition on the body and the door of the vehicle. The stiffness after compression of seal is extracted from this non-linear analysis which is further used to obtain the vibration modes for the doors in the truck cabin. Subsequently, the compressed seal stiffness value is used in the operational vibration and structure borne cabin noise analyses to evaluate the influence on vehicle’s NVH performance. The simulated results for modal performance comprising the effects of seal are validated with the experimental test data and are noticed to be in alignment. The simulated result of models that are studied with the use of uncompressed seal data and compressed seal data are compared for operational vibration, operational noise respectively. It is observed that the compressed seal stiffness has an impact on the structure borne NVH performance of the truck cabin. Keywords: Door seal, Mooney – Rivlin, Stiffness, Compressed seal stiffness, Structure borne NVH, Operational vibrations, Operational noise