This paper on "Design Optimization of Vehicle Panel with Respect to Cabin Noise Problems" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on Design, Simulation & Optimisation: Reliability & Applicability of Computational Methods - 9-11 April 1997, Stuttgart, Germany.

Abstract

In the early stage of a vehicle body development trends for the acoustic behaviour of the whole vehicle are on the one hand of great importance, however, on the other hand they are difficult to achieve. The geometry based, parametric model turns out to be a powerful tool to find out these trends. Very little expenditure is needed to create different designs using variable element meshes. The geometry based, parametric model description carried out by the commercial code ANSYS [4] finally allows an automatic optimization with respect to different criteria. In this paper the geometry based model of a vehicle body is presented. The noise transfer function indicating the correlation between a force excitation of the body structure and the sound pressure at the drivers ear will be described. This function is calculated using a detailed finite element model for the structure and a coarse boundary element model for the cabin. Design parameters are introduced and optimized to minimize the average sound pressure level at the drivers ear. The results are compared with the usual stiffening of shell structures by beams.