Beamforming Quantification of Acoustic Transmission Paths for Passenger Vehicles Using a Reciprocal Approach

Oettle, Nicholas; Graham, Samuel; Sims-Williams, David; Riegel, Matthias; Hebestreit, Ramon

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental method for
measuring transmission paths from the exterior to the
interior of a passenger vehicle using a reciprocal
approach: A production vehicle was placed in a semi-anechoic
environment; artificial noise sources were placed at the location
of the occupant’s ear(s) inside the vehicle and beamforming
arrays with a total of more than 300 microphones were used to
observe apparent noise sources on the vehicle exterior resulting
from transmission paths. This makes it possible to quickly
measure transmission paths over the whole vehicle body.
One of the motivations for this work is the monitoring
of sealing quality on production vehicles. Artificial seal
breaches were introduced on the vehicle and a number of
excitation signals were assessed to develop a method to detect
and localise leakage noise sources.

The investigation and methodology demonstrate the
potential for the use of reciprocal beamforming to detect
acoustic transmission paths with a view to identifying
errors that would impact a vehicle’s wind noise performance,
for instance in a manufacturing environment. In
addition, it also shows benefits in the use of a similar
approach for detecting non-leakage transmission weaknesses,
which has applications including the comparison
of the isolation performance of various vehicles to
external noises.

Citation

Oettle, N., Graham, S., Sims-Williams, D., Riegel, M., & Hebestreit, R. (2023, May). Beamforming Quantification of Acoustic Transmission Paths for Passenger Vehicles Using a Reciprocal Approach. Presented at Noise and Vibration Conference & Exhibition, Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Noise and Vibration Conference & Exhibition
• Start Date: May 15, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Mar 7, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 8, 2023
• Publication Date: May 8, 2023
• Deposit Date: Dec 8, 2023
• Publisher: SAE International
• Pages: 1-9
• Series ISSN: ISSN 0148-7191
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4271/2023-01-1090
• Keywords: beamforming, aeroacoustics, reciprocal
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1984932