Indirect Couplings in Energy Flow Models: Can They be Used to Improve Vehicle NVH Predictions?

Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) and SEA-Like (SEAL) methods are of growing interest to the vehicle industry as an engineering tool used in the search for improved NVH designs. SEA rests upon the assumption of weak coupling and manual identification of transmission paths. Therefore, applicability of SEA depends on how well these issues are fulfilled. To help expand the applicability, a SEAL procedure that can be used for strongly coupled cases and automatically includes all transmission paths is demonstrated. Also, coupling mechanisms and transmission paths that are not traditionally included in SEA or SEAL methods are discussed.