Vibro-Acoustic CAE from an Industrial Application Perspective 2005-26-050

Vibro-acoustic simulation methods such as FEM and BEM have made an enormous progress for modelling and describing the acoustic and vibro-acoustic behaviour of mechanical systems. In order to make these techniques truly become part of the “virtual” industrial design process however, the specific challenges related to industrial-sized problems must be overcome. The paper reviews the critical issues to building and solving large-scale problems and discusses practical aspects such as the correct load definition and simulation performance requirements and improvements. Some breakthrough solutions like Acoustic Transfer Vectors and parallel computing are discussed. Specific attention is devoted to the potential of hybrid methods combining virtual models with experimental data. The discussed are illustrated by means of powertrain noise and vibration case studies.