Structural/Acoustic Modeling with Acoustical Treatments: A Comparison of FE, Hybrid FE/SEA Analysis and SEA Analysis

There are several methods to model a cavity coupled to a structure with some noise control treatment between them. In this paper, three modeling approaches will be presented. The problem to be investigated is panel adjacent to a cavity with layered acoustic treatment on the panel. The analysis will predict the response of the panel/cavity system with an absorptive treatment and a barrier treatment. Both acoustic and structural excitation will be applied. The first model will be a fully FE model where a FE panel is coupled to an FE cavity through an FE noise control treatment. The second model will be a hybrid model with an FE panel and an SEA cavity coupled through a noise control treatment. The noise control treatment will be modeled with a transfer matrix based methodology. Finally, a fully SEA model will be used with the panel and cavity modeled with SEA and the noise control treatment model with a transfer matrix approach. The different assumptions integral to each method and their implications in the predicted results will be discussed.