A new generalized approach to Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA)

SEA is widely used for the prediction of aircraft interior noise. In a traditional SEA model a system is partitioned into a number of subsystems and expressions are obtained for the transmission of reverberant energy between those subsystems. The accuracy of an SEA model depends on the accuracy of the library of subsystems available in a given SEA code. Traditional SEA codes have somewhat limited libraries of subsystems that are based on analytical derivations of wave propagation and scattering in simplified cross-sections. Such cross-sections are adequate for very simple systems but they are not general enough to rigorously describe the vibro-acoustic behavior of modern aircraft constructions. This paper describes recent work by the authors that has focused on generalizing SEA theory in order to describe wave propagation through arbitrary cross-sections. The new SEA theory has been implemented in the commercial vibro-acoustics code wave6 and the current paper provides an overview along with a number of validation examples.