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The use of inertial transducers to replace traditional loudspeakers is an innovative way to reproduce a quality audio signal in a vehicle cockpit while significantly reducing on-board mass and overall volume of the audio system. An electrodynamic inertial exciter is an actuator commonly used for the realization of distributed mode loudspeakers or DML (Distributed Mode Loudspeaker) to generate vibrations of a panel radiating an acoustic wave. As for a loudspeaker, an inertial exciter implements a coupling process and is based on the interactions between a current and a magnetic field. The coil is movable and the magnetic mass stationary in the case of the loudspeaker, while the reverse is true for the inertial exciter. This paper presents the development process of a new inertial transducer and its optimization by digital simulation, validated by tests on physical prototypes.

With a carbon neutrality horizon in 2050 as target for the industry, the use of growing quantities of recycled and recyclable materials is key. “Greenflocks” chips urethane based poroelastic material coming from recycled PU mattresses, that are decontaminated, shredded, mixed with thermoplastic bi-component PET fibers as well as thermofixed with hot air ovens resulting in low Volatile Organic Component (VOC) and odors, seems to be a good candidate. Indeed, one gets a 80 % recycled poroelastic material, 100% recyclable, with mechanical and acoustical properties allowing between 10 % and 20 % weight reduction compared to shoddy cotton felt typically depending on the density. Indeed, this “Greenflocks” material presents excellent mechanical decoupling properties even at high densities for the low thickness areas above 150 kg/m3 and up to 300 kg/m3 typically with a Young’s modulus kept below 150 kPa.

Automotive suppliers provide multi-layer trims mainly made of porous materials. They have a real expertise on the characterization and the modeling of poro-elastic materials. A dozen parameters are used to characterize the acoustical and elastical behavior of such materials. The recent vibro-acoustic simulation tools enable to take into account this type of material but require the Biot parameters as input. Several characterization methods exist and the question of reproducibility and confidence in the parameters arises. A Round Robin test was conducted on three poro-elastic material with four laboratories. Compared to other Round Robin test on the characterization of acoustical and elastical parameters of porous material, this one is more specific since the four laboratories are familiar with automotive applications. Methods and results are compared and discussed in this work.

The properties of a polyurethane foam are greatly influenced by the addition of graphite particles during the manufacturing process, initially used as a fire retardant. These thin solid particles perturbate the nucleation process by generating bubbles in their immediate vicinity. A large body of work has focused on foams that are reasonably homogeneous. In this work, we propose a modeling approach for inhomogeneous foams that includes membrane effects and allows pore size distributions to be accounted for. The cellular structure of the foam is obtained through a random Laguerre tessellation optimized from experimental properties. The structure of real foam samples is analyzed using X-ray computed tomography and scanning electron microscopy, followed by image processing, to create three-dimensional, digital models of the samples.

Middle and high frequency vibro-acoustic simulation of complex shape insulators requires using 3D poroelastic finite elements. This can be applied to either the whole part (up to 2500 Hz maximum) or through singly curved pre-computed Insertion Losses (up to 5000 Hz maximum) to be introduced in large SEA or energy-based models. Indeed, a dependence of the Insertion Loss slopes of noise treatments following the curvature is observed both experimentally and numerically. Beyond frequency range limitations, poroelastic finite element simulations following all curvatures and thickness 3D maps typically take too much time of up to a few hours each. A cylindrical Transfer Matrix Method spectral approach significantly reduces the time for the calculation of singly curved Insertion Losses up to 10 kHz to only a few minutes. This simplifies enormously the SEA modeling effort enabling easier, more precise fully trimmed vehicle middle and high frequency vibro-acoustic simulations.

Whenever the noise source level or the expected acoustic comfort increases for diesel engines for example or for premium petrol vehicles, the required weight per unit area can be specified above 2000 g/m2 for the equivalent barrier of a mixed absorbing-insulating noise treatment. For an ABA foam/heavy layer/felt insulator, this is not a big issue, one has to increase the intermediate heavy layer weight. For hybrid stiff compressed felt backfoamed standard technologies, going above 2000 g/m2 is critical due to absorption properties loss following much too high airflow resistances and progressive porosity loss (above 250 kg/m3) as well as too high bending stiffness presenting resonant modes progressively and assembly manipulation issues. Last but not least, compressed felts begin to present too high costs at these weights against those of the heavy layers of ABA systems.

The lightweighting research on noise treatments since years tends to prove the efficiency of the combination of good insulation with steep insulation slopes with broadband absorption, even in the context of bad passthroughs management implying strong leakages. The real issue lies more in the industrial capacity to adapt the barrier mass per unit area to the acoustic target from low to high segment or from low petrol to high diesel sources, while remaining easy to manipulate. The hybrid stiff insulator family can realize this easily with hard felts barriers backfoamed weighting from 800 g/m2 to 2000 g/m2 typically with compressions below 10 mm. Above these equivalent barrier weights and traditional compressions of 7 mm for example, the high density of the felts begins to destroy the open porosity and thus the absorption properties (insulation works anyway here, whenever vibration modes do not appear due to too high stiffness…).

The noise treatments weight reduction strategy, which consists in combining broadband absorption and insulation acoustic properties in order to reduce the weight of barriers, depends strongly on surface to volume ratio of the absorbing layers in the reception cavity. Indeed, lightweight technologies like the now classical Absorber /Barrier /Absorber layup are extremely efficient behind the Instrument Panel of a vehicle, but most of the time disappointing when applied as floor insulator behind the carpet. This work aims at showing that a minimum of 20 mm equivalent “shoddy” standard cotton felt absorption is requested for a floor carpet insulator, in order to be able to reduce the weight of barriers. This means that a pure absorbing system that would destroy completely the insulation properties and slopes can only work, if the noise sources are extremely low in this specific area, which is seldom the case even at the rear footwells location.

The Flaxpreg is a green and light very long flax fibers thermoset reinforced sandwich, which can be effectively used as multi-position trunk loadfloor or structural floor in the passenger compartment of a vehicle. The prepreg FlaxTapes of about 120 g/m2 constituting the skins of the sandwich, are unidirectionally aligned flax fibers tapes, with acrylic resin here, easily manipulable without requiring any spinning or weaving step and thus without any negative out of plane crimping of the almost continuous flax fibers. Thanks to their very low 1.45 kg/dm3 density combined with an adaptive 0°/90°/0° orientation of the FlaxTapes (for each skin) depending on the loading boundary conditions, the resulting excellent mechanical properties allow a - 35% weight reduction compared to petro-sourced Glass mat/PUR sandwich solutions (like the Baypreg).

In order to reach the new 2020 CO2 emissions regulations, we have developed a wide range of lightweight noise treatment technologies going from pure absorbing to highly insulating ones, depending on the pass-through quality situation. This Generalized Light-Weight Concepts family was first optimized using the 2D Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) combined with quick SEA approaches. Taking into account thickness 3D maps with TMM is an efficient and quick intermediate “2,5D” optimization method, but it is not a real 3D approach. This work presents a new 3D optimization procedure based on poroelastic finite elements including intermediate cavities (like Instrument Panels) for designing these Generalized Light-Weight Concepts. A parallel reflection deals with products and processes in order to check the feasibility of the resulting 3D optimized insulator designs.

The weight reduction challenge has taken a new shape in the past two years due to high pressure on CO2 emissions in the automotive industry. The new question is: what level of acoustic performance can you get with an insulator weighting less than 2500 g/m2? The existing solutions at this weight being mainly dissipative (absorption) concepts give a satisfactory performance only if the pass-throughs are poor and present critical leakages. Respecting the less than 2500 g/m2 weight target, we have developed a wide range of new or optimized concepts switching from extremely absorbing to highly insulating noise treatments playing with multi-layers insulators (typically three to four layers), in combination or not with tunable absorbers on the other side of the metal sheet (in the engine compartment for example).

In order to reach OEMs acoustic treatment targets (improving performance while minimizing the weight and cost impact), we have developed an original hybrid approach called “Vehicle Acoustic synthesis method”[1] to simulate - and therefore to optimize - noise treatments for both insulation and absorption, and to calculate the resulting Sound Pressure Level (SPL) at ear points for the middle and high frequency range. To calculate the SPL, we identify equivalent volume velocity sources from intensity measurements, and combine them to acoustic transfer functions (panel/ear) measured or computed with ray tracing codes using the reciprocity principle. Compared to our first approach [1], this paper shows a new measurement technique using pressure-particle velocity probes [2]. This technique allows to reduce acquisition time by a factor four, and makes therefore possible a synthesis method on a complete car within two weeks.