In-Situ Characterization of Vibrations from a Door Mounted Loudspeaker

In the automotive industry, there is an increasing need for gaining efficiency and confidence in the prediction capability for various attributes. Often, one component or sub-system is used in a number of car models of one vehicle platform. Many of these components are potential sources of noise, vibration and squeak and rattle. In order to provide an early prognosis, vibro-acoustic source characterization in combination with the source-to-response transfer behavior are required. This paper describes the process of predicting the vibrational behavior due to a woofer, which could induce squeak and rattle, on a door panel. Blocked forces, determined indirectly in-situ by frequency response functions and operational accelerations, were used for quantifying the source activity. Those forces were in a second step loaded on to a finite element model in order to predict the response when the speaker was mounted to another position in an upcoming car model. Prior to this, comparisons between the measured and simulated response for the same car model were made, with satisfying agreement.