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It is well known that mufflers attenuate the engine noise essentially through dissipative and reflective effects. There is however another alternative technique for noise attenuation that has not been deeply explored, i.e. thermal acoustics. In fact the temperature of the gas influences the acoustic behaviour of the exhaust system; reducing the exhaust gas temperature, the sound pressure of the acoustic waves is reduced. This phenomenum could be used to improve the sound attenuation. We propose an experimental study of this phenomenum and of how it could be used to reduce the exhaust noise. We measured that, using in underfloor position passive heat exchangers like corrugated pipes, the exhaust gas quickly exchanges heat with the external environment and arrives to the rear muffler significantly colder. We observe about 2 dB decrease of the OA dB value when the gas temperature decreases of about 100°C.

An exhaust system comprises at least one muffler, the back pressure generated by the muffler exponentially grows as the engine speed increases. Accordingly, fuel consumption and direct CO2 emissions are penalized due to the back pressure generated by the muffling body in order to reduce noise emissions. To obviate this, it has been suggested to construct an exhaust system with two differentiated paths according to the engine speed, so that at low speeds the exhaust gases follow a first high acoustic attenuation (high back pressure) path, while at high speeds (high exhaust gas pressure), the exhaust gases follow a second low acoustic attenuation (low back pressure) path. Simulation and experimental analysis will be presented. A control valve is provided to alternatively direct the exhaust gases along the desired path according to the engine speed. These control valves usually include an electric or electro-pneumatic actuator, but are heavy, large in size and expensive.