Project 6: “Cabin noise reconstruction at the mid-high frequency range” (1998)

The Italian company Ferrari, dedicated to the manufacture of high-performance racing and sport cars, financed a private research project called: “Cabin noise reconstruction at the mid-high frequency range”, to apply it to its new car model, the Ferrari 456. The aim of this project was to carry out an acoustic characterisation of the vehicle. Model inversion technology was applied for this purpose. This method allowed us to calculate the sound power of all the interior panels of the car. Both in the mid and high frequency range.

The aim of the Model Inversion methodology is to identify and characterise all interior surfaces (sound sources). To subsequently determine their contribution to each and every point of the sound field inside the room. This Model is a non-intrusive technique. Which allows, in a very reasonable period of time, to minimize the interferences inside the cabin.

Through the methodology used by our engineering team, Ferrari was able to reduce the process of obtaining the sound power levels of the interior surfaces of the passenger compartment. This reduction went from a total of 30 days to just 2-3 days.

At ICR we have been developing our own computational tools for the study of the inverse problem over the last 25 years. These resources include optimisation techniques, resampling and stability analysis to guarantee the validity of the solutions obtained.

As a result of this research study applied to the automotive sector, an article was published at the Euronoise ’98 European Congress, entitled: “An innovative approach for the noise reconstruction and analysis at the medium-high frequencies.” O. Guasch, F.X. Magrans, P.V. Rodriguez & G. Manacorda, Proceedings of Euro-Noise, Munich, Germany, October, Vol. I, pp. 503-509 (1998).