Predicting Transmission Loss of Mufflers with Perforated Tube Elements using the Boundary Element Method

Transmission loss (TL) is a common metric for the comparison of the acoustic performance of mufflers. Muffler TL can be computed from a Boundary Element Method (BEM) model. Perforated tube elements are commonly used in automotive muffler applications. These can be modeled with a detailed BEM model that includes each individual hole in the perforated tube. The main drawback with such a straightforward BEM approach is that the discretionary of the perforated surfaces can result in computationally expensive models. The current work uses an approach that is a more computationally-efficient, yet, precise way of modeling complex mufflers that contain perforated surfaces with BEM. In this approach, instead of explicitly modeling the perforations explicitly they are taken into account as equivalent transfer impedances. There are several models in the literature that can be used to develop the transfer impedance model of the perforated surface. This paper investigates how these models can be used in a BEM prediction and also how one needs to be careful in selecting the cases used to evaluate the models.