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Lightweighting of vehicle panels enclosing vehicle cabin causes NVH degradation since engine, road, and wind noise acoustic sources propagate to the vehicle interior through these panels. In order to reduce this NVH degradation, there is a need to develop new NVH sound package materials and designs for use in lightweight vehicle design. Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) model can be an effective CAE design tool to develop NVH sound packages for use in lightweight vehicle design. Using SEA can help engineers recover the NVH deficiency created due to sheet metal lightweighting actions. Full vehicle SEA model was developed to evaluate the high frequency NVH performance of “Vehicle A” in the frequency range from 200 Hz to 10 kHz. This correlated SEA model was used for the vehicle sound package optimization studies. Full vehicle level NVH laboratory tests for engine and tire patch noise reduction were also conducted to demonstrate the performance of sound package designs on “Vehicle A”.

System Engineering has increasingly been applied in the automotive industry to develop quality vehicles efficiently and effectively. It is particularly important to use System Engineering methods in the early stages of vehicle development when all requirements such as performance, package space, cost and weight are actively defined and balanced, and when decisions are made that have substantial downstream design consequences. To achieve effective balance, decisions have to be data driven to complement engineering experience and judgment. Analytical tools (CAE) have been developed in the industry to evaluate and synthesize designs. However, there are limited examples and discussions in the literature on how the “upfront” CAE can be implemented to integrate cross-functional requirements into the component design. Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) method is the CAE tool used in sound package development.