A numerical study on the sound transmission loss of HST aluminum extruded panel

Aluminum is a light, strong, and corrosion-resistant material. Its extruded form, the aluminum extruded panel, consists of two aluminum plates with truss core, which can be applied in a wide range of engineering areas. In this work, the structure-acoustic coupling finite element method (FEM) is employed to analyze the sound transmission through high-speed train (HST) aluminum extruded panels. The automatically matched layer (AML) is used to simulate the non-reflective boundary condition. It is found that the predicted sound transmission loss (STL) is in good agreement with the experimental results and the prediction accuracy of the finite element method can be further verified. Based on this proposed method, a parametric study is carried out to investigate how the structure parameters affect the STL. The results suggest that the rib angle exhibits a greater effect on STL in the above-middle frequency area where the modal density is high. The increase in the height between the panels will lead to a higher STL overall value of the aluminum extruded panel and make the STL dips move toward higher frequencies, while the increase of the rib thickness will drive the STL dips to an opposite direction. Finally, the STLs of the aluminum extruded panel in different regions of the train body are comprehensively analyzed. The highest overall value of STL is found in the flat-top region, whereas the lowest value appears in the curve-top region. Overall, the results in this article can provide valuable implications for the noise performance optimization of HST.