High Frequency NVH Analysis of Full Size Pickups Using “SEAM”

The recent surveys of customer satisfaction regarding full size pickup trucks have created new mandates in performance of such vehicles. The customers for this class of vehicles demand new frontiers in attributes such as NVH, ride and handling performance that previously only belonged to the luxury passenger cars. The full size pickup truck in question must retain a tough image and be as durable as the previous generation truck that it replaces. But it also needs to be user friendly in order for one to drive it like an every day passenger car on a daily basis.

The challenge is to design for the NVH performance that matches and surpasses many well behaved and “good” NVH passenger cars without any compromise in durability performance. An NVH 7-8 subjective rating performance is targeted for the design of full size pickup truck during vehicle operation.

In this paper, the authors demonstrate a new method that was used in the design for NVH for the full size pickup truck in the high frequency range. The method is largely based on parametric modeling of the structures in which one can quickly change the size, delete or add structural members, modify or improve the planned sound package to access the NVH performance. A comercially available spreadsheet was used to lay out the structural parameters as well as sound package data. The CAE driven design was verified by prototype testing.