H-Matrix BEM application and validation for space habitat

Acoustic requirements for space habitats are stringent and involve a combination of noise sources minimization and public address and general alarm (PAGA) system validation. Simulation solutions are essential for demonstrating compliance requirement as early as possible and continuously throughout the development cycle of the spacecraft. Space habitats' sound field can be computationally challenging to predict in a deterministic manner for most of the audible spectrum as the volume can be important. For this application, an initial PAGA system design assessment was performed using Ray-Tracing, a geometric statistical method, which must be validated using a deterministic method. For validation purpose, the Boundary Element Method (BEM) was chosen for this application. Given the size of the structure and the desired frequency range, the BEM model was very large, containing over 250,000 wetted nodes, and a standard BEM solver required approximately 200GB of RAM. To limit computing hardware constraints, a newly implemented commercially available H-Matrix BEM solver was used. Pressure maps of a PAGA system simulation on a generic space habitat resulting from the Ray-Tracing and H-Matrix BEM solvers are compared to a standard BEM simulation. Results are compared both in terms of accuracy and computational performance, showing the advantages of using multiple simulation methods at various stages of the design.