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This paper presents the design and experimental results of a novel test setup to measure the road impact response of a rotating tire. The test setup is based on a tire on tire principle and is used to analyse mechanisms of tire/road noise during road impact excitations, such as driving on cobbled roads, joints of a concrete road surface, railroad crossings,… A series of test are performed with different driving speeds, cleat dimensions and inflation pressures. Radiated noise, vibrations of the tire surface and spindle forces are measured on the test setup during impact excitations.

A key element to bring research advances on intelligent materials to industrial use is that the product CAE models must support such solutions. This involves modeling capabilities for intelligent material systems, sensor and actuator components, control systems as well as their integration in system-level application designs. The final result will then be a multi-attribute optimization approach integrating noise and vibration performance with reliability, durability and cost aspects. As no single integrated solution will fulfill all requirements of the various material and control approaches, the focus of the research is on the use, combination and extension of existing codes and tools.

In the context of the reduction of traffic-related noise the research reported in this paper provides tools that could be used to develop low noise tyres. Two measurement techniques have been analyzed for exterior noise radiation characterization of a loaded rotating slick tyre on a rough road surface. On one hand sound pressure measurements at low spatial resolution with strategically placed microphones on a half-hemisphere around the tyre/road contact point have been performed. This technique provides a robust solution to compute the (overall) sound power level. On the other hand sound intensity measurements at high spatial resolution by means of a scanning intensity probe have been performed. This technique allows a more detailed spatial visualization of the noise radiation and helps in getting more insight and better understanding of the acoustical phenomena.

The identification of the contributions of airborne noise sources in vehicles in operational driving conditions is still a cumbersome task. Whereas the measurement of the transfer path from possible noise sources to the observer ear locations is efficient and accurate in most conditions, the source strength identification is still a challenging task. This paper presents the basic concepts of a new source quantification technique based on acoustic pressure measurements close to the operating sources. The main goal of developing a new technique is to achieve a faster and more economic method as compared to existing methods.

Tire noise has become a predominant contributor in many traffic noise situations nowadays and hence, the demand for accurate tire noise prediction models is high. A rolling tire is experimentally characterized by means of the substitution monopole technique: the running tire is substituted by the non-operating tire covered by monopoles. All monopoles have mutual phase relationships and a well defined volume velocity distribution which is derived by means of an inverse Airborne Source Quantification technique; i.e. by combining static transfer function measurements with operational indicator pressure measurements close to the rolling tire. Models with varying amounts and locations of monopoles are discussed.

Lightweight structures and designs have been widely used in a number of engineered structures due to ecological and environmental aspects. Nonetheless, lightweight structures typically experience a reduced noise and vibration reduction performance as a consequence of their increased stiffness-to-mass-ratio. To enhance it, novel low mass and compact countermeasures are often sought to address the challenges of achieving not only a good Noise, Vibrations and Harshness (NVH) reduction performance but also maintaining a lightweight design. Recently, locally resonant metamaterials have emerged and shown potential as a lightweight noise and vibration solution with a superior performance in tunable frequency ranges, known as stop bands i.e. frequency regions where free wave propagation is not allowed. These can be achieved by assembling resonant elements that are tuned to the targeted frequency range onto a host structure.

In tire development, the dynamic tire-road contact forces are an important indicator to assess structure-borne interior cabin noise. This type of noise is the dominant source in the frequency range from 50-450 Hz, especially when rolling with constant angular velocity on a rough road. The spatial force distribution is difficult or sometimes even impossible to simulate or measure in practice. So, the use of an inverse technique is proposed. This technique uses response measurements in combination with a digital twin simulation model to obtain the input forces in an inverse way. The responses and model properties are expressed in the time domain, since it is specifically aimed to trace back the impact locations from road surface texture indents on the tire. In order to do so, the transient responses of the travelling waves as a result of these impacts is used. The framework expresses responses as a convolution product of the unknown loads and impulse response measurements.

One dimensional linear acoustics network models are commonly used for the acoustic design of intake and exhaust systems. These models are advantageous since they allow the characterization of the scattering matrices for individual elements, independent of the upstream or downstream components. For an intake or exhaust assembly, the individual elements can be combined by a simple multiplication of the individual matrices to assess the propagation characteristics of the whole system under consideration. The determination of the scattering matrix coefficients can be carried out in an analytical, numerical or experimental way. Since the analytical methodologies are limited to uniform or simplified mean flow representation and the experimental two-port determination is expensive and time-consuming, a numerical method using the time domain Linearized Euler Equations is proposed in this paper.

The investigation of critical noise sources on pass-by noise tests is demanding development of the current techniques in order to locate and quantify these sources. One recent approach is to use beamforming techniques to this purpose. The phased array information can be processed using several methods, for example, conventional delay-and-sum algorithms, deconvolution based algorithms, such as DAMAS, and more recently, the generalized inverse beamforming. This later method, presents the advantage of separating coherent sources with better dynamic range than conventional beamforming. Also, recent developments, such as Iteratively Re-Weigthing Least Squares, increases the localization accuracy allowing it to be used in a challenging problem as a fast moving source detection, a non-stationary condition. The work will raise the main advantages and disadvantages on this method using a practical case, a passenger vehicle pass-by test.

Stringent regulations for CO2 emissions and noise pollution reduction demand lighter and improved Noise, Vibration Harshness (NVH) solutions in automotive industries. Designing light, compact and, at the same time, improved NVH solutions is often a challenge, as low noise and vibration levels often require heavy and bulky additions, especially to be effective in the low frequency regime. Recently, locally resonant metamaterials have emerged among the novel NVH solutions because of their performant NVH properties combined with lightweight and compact design. Due to the characteristic of stop band behavior, frequency ranges where free wave propagation is inhibited, metamaterials can beat the mass law, be it at least in some tunable frequency ranges. Previously the authors demonstrated how metamaterials can reduce the vibrations in a simplified shock tower upon shaker excitation. In this work, the authors apply the metamaterial concept on the real rear shock towers of a vehicle.

This paper demonstrates the application of a resonant metamaterial concept to tyres in order to reduce structure-borne tyre/road noise. Special attention is given to the frequency range around 220Hz, containing the first acoustic tyre resonances. These resonances are known to transmit high forces to the wheel-knuckle, leading to structural energy propagating into the vehicle’s body and, consequently, causing a tonal noise issue in the vehicle compartment. By adding recycled rubber resonant elements to the inner liner of the tyre, structural stop band behaviour is achieved in the frequency band of interest. Hence, structural vibrations in the tyre are reduced, resulting in a reduction of the excitation of the first acoustic tyre resonances and, consequently, a mitigation of the transmitted forces to the wheel-knuckle. First, the stop band behaviour is designed via unit cell modelling of a section of a tyre mock-up that only accounts for its structural behaviour.

Prediction of the drive-by noise level in the early design stage of an automotive vehicle is feasible if the source signatures and source-receiver transfer functions may be determined from simulations based on the available CAD/CAE models. This paper reports on the performance of a drive-by noise synthesis procedure in which the transfer functions are numerically evaluated by employing the Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method (FMBEM). The proposed synthesis procedure first computes the steady-state receiver contributions of the sources as appearing from a number of vehicle positions along the drive path. In a second step, these contributions are then combined into a single transient signal from a moving vehicle for each source-receiver pair by means of a travel time correction.