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Measurements of interior wind noise sound pressure level have shown that dBA and Loudness are not adequate metrics of wind noise sound quality due to non-stationary characteristics such as temporal modulation and impulse. A surface microphone array with high spatio-temporal resolution has been used to measure and analyze the corresponding non-stationary characteristics of the exterior aero-acoustic loading. Wavenumber filtering is used to observe the unsteady character of the low wavenumber aero-acoustic loading components most likely to be exciting glass vibration and transmitting sound.

Low frequency interior wind noise is typically dominated by underfloor flow noise. The source mechanisms are fluctuating surface pressure loading from both flow turbulence and acoustic field levels developed in the semi-reverberant cavity between floor and road. Previous studies have used computation fluid dynamics (CFD) to estimate the aero-acoustic loading applied to a vibro-acoustic model, which is then used to predict the transmitted interior wind noise. This paper reports a new perspective in two respects. First it uses novel surface pressure microphone arrays to directly measure the underfloor aero-acoustic loading in the wind tunnel. Second, it considers two different underfloor aerodynamic configurations - with and without lightweight aero cover panels, which are installed primarily to reduce aerodynamic drag.