A Computational Approach to Assess Design Impact on Wind Noise for Heavy Trucks

Exposure to excessive background noise levels cause fatigue among passengers in all vehicles. Therefore, interior wind noise at cruising conditions is becoming more important for heavy trucks. Early assessment of shape impact on wind noise enables engineers to make design changes to reduce the wind noise instead of relying on late stage costly counter-measures. A computational approach to evaluate the wind noise inside the truck cabin due to exterior shape is demonstrated in this paper. Effect of the sun-visor shape on interior noise is evaluated by simulating vehicle configurations with and without the sun-visor. Transient, compressible CFD using the Lattice-Boltzmann Method is coupled with a Statistical Energy Analysis structural acoustic vehicle model to predict panel contributions to interior wind noise. Detailed flow analysis is performed identify the key noise sources due to the sun-visor design, that contribute to the interior noise. Design decisions to improve the interior noise are derived from this flow analysis.