Evaluation of Design Variables to Improve Sound Radiation and Transmission Loss Performances of a Dash Panel Component of an Automotive Vehicle

Abstract

While a dash panel component, close to passengers, plays a very important role to protect heat and noise from a power train, it is also a main path that transfers vibration energy and eventually radiates acoustic noise into the cavity. Therefore, it is important to provide optimal design schemes incorporating sound packages such as a dash isolation pad and a floor carpet, as well as structures.The present study is the extension of the previous investigation how design variables affect sound radiation, which was carried out using the simple plate and framed system. A novel FE-SEA hybrid simulation model is used for this study. The system taken into account is a dash panel component of a sedan vehicle, which includes front pillars, front side members, a dash panel and corresponding sound packages. Design variables such as panel thicknesses and sound packages are investigated how they are related to two main NVH indexes, sound radiation power(i.e. structure-borne) and sound transmission loss(i.e. air borne). In the viewpoint of obtaining better NVH performance, it is shown that these two indexes do not always result in same tendencies of improvement, which suggests that they should be dealt with independently and are also dependent on frequency regions.