Finite Element Simulations of Acoustic Black Holes as Lightweight Damping Treatments for Automotive Body Panels with Application to Full Vehicle Interior Wind Noise Predictions

For energy-efficient mobility with a high level of comfort, weight and noise reduction of vehicles should be ideally achieved at the same time. The Acoustic Black Hole (ABH) effect has been identified as a promising concept by quite a number of recent studies, only very few of which, however, consider applications for the automotive industry in the low-frequency domain. Since, on the one hand, finite element NVH trimmed body models of a production car can typically be used for noise predictions up to 500 Hz, and, on the other hand, ABHs embedded into automotive body panels tend to show substantial effects at frequencies above 200 Hz, the goal of this paper is to study the ABH performance in this context. In particular, the parametric dependencies on size, position, depth, and number of ABHs are analyzed. As aerodynamic loads take strong effect on the underbody region, where ABHs may be placed as well, special focus is given to interior wind noise predictions and two-dimensional ABHs. The results of the simulations, which are done by a commercial FE code, suggest that the usage of ABHs can have significant impact on the low-frequency noise reduction of a vehicle.