Application of Numerical Acoustic Methods to Noise Reduction in Vehicle Compartments

The advancement of numerical methods for acoustics has enhanced the ability to make meaningful predictions of acoustic responses in vehicle passenger compartments, such as those found in automobiles, trucks, and construction equipment. A design objective of growing importance is to isolate the occupants from both structural and air-borne noise. This paper presents how an indirect boundary element formulation can be used to study the effect of holes on the transmission of air-borne sound, and how design changes effect the transmission of sound through heater and air conditioning ducts. The theoretical background of the indirect formulation is also presented. The significance of this method is that it can include openings in the model while considering the acoustic medium on both sides of the mesh. It is also computationally superior to the direct method because the assembled matrices are symmetric.