Lightweight Active Exhaust Silencers for Passenger Vehicles

In the past years, Eberspaecher has developed active exhaust silencers for several passenger vehicles with different engines on a prototype level. In general, a substantial reduction of the exhaust noise is regularly achieved in a frequency range of 40 - 400 Hz covering the most relevant engine orders.

In exhaust system development the main design conflicts are noise reduction, silencer volume/weight and backpressure. Recent progress was made in the development of the durability and industrialization of the actuator. This component could be reduced in size and weight thus allowing the integration in different design spaces of many vehicles. In some cases, the conventional dual exhaust system can even be replaced by an active single exhaust line without compromising on the acoustic or backpressure targets but saving > 50 % of space and > 30% weight. The potential impact of this technology on future vehicle designs will be discussed.