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With the current focus of the automotive industry on improving fuel consumption, it is becoming increasingly more common to adapt current/existing vehicle platforms for integration with electric powertrains. This integration can have an impact on many areas of the vehicle development process, including noise and vibration performance. Alongside the understood benefits to fuel economy, electric powertrains can present many unique noise and vibration related development challenges which require specific attention, particularly for cases in which a conventional gasoline engine vehicle platform is used as a surrogate for the electric powertrain. In this paper, several of the potential noise and vibration development activities will be highlighted, including discussions on powertrain vibration, accessory noise and vibration, and acoustic package material development to deliver a refined noise and vibration experience to the customer.

Powertrain NVH and Powertrain Sound Quality requirements are among the key attributes to meet when developing new engines or vehicles. Source-Path-Contribution (SPC) solutions are commonly used to support the vehicle design and development. They allow to quantify the relative contributions of the different excitation sources, whether airborne or structure-borne, and the transfer paths to the noise and vibration measured at the receiver locations. When performed in time domain, SPC analysis is also a very effective tool to evaluate interactively the powertrain Sound Quality and how it can be affected by design changes. In this paper, we present a joint project performed by B&K Global Engineering Services together with Subaru where the team leveraged SPC models for powertrain noise of existing vehicles to create a new virtual vehicle assembly when the powertrain from the first vehicle is installed in the body of the second vehicle.

An important factor contributing to a customer’s subjective perception of a vehicle, particularly at the point-of-purchase, is the sound created by the passenger doors during closure events. Although these sounds are very short in duration the key systems that control the sounds produced can be highly coupled. Similarly, the necessary efforts required to understand key design criteria affecting the sound can also be highly complex. Within this paper sub-systems affecting the door closure sound are evaluated to understand key structural properties and behaviors toward the contribution to the overall sound produced. This begins with the subjective preferences of typical sounds and the difficulties with both measuring and reproducing these sounds appropriately and leads directly to the target setting and target cascading process.