Global competition has drastically changed the NVH engineering process in automotive and aircraft industry over the last 20 years. The demand to consistently shorten and improve the overall development process has forced engineers to develop new methods to reduce needs for physical prototype testing and to increase prediction capability. A new paradigm is being introduced that focuses on virtual prototyping as a way to deploy the "Design Right First Time" approach. The objective is to allow engineers to simulate the effect of a large variety of design alternatives on the NVH overall performances.
Toady, a large number of numerical and hybrid NVH modelling techniques are available and widely recognized, but still missing is the sound quality aspect or the human factor in the development process.
To bring the sound quality aspect in the development of new cars and aircrafts, an innovative research project was set up in which an interactive, real-time sound synthesis environment was developed. This sound synthesis environment allows engineers to listen to their virtual models from the initial stages of development and to judge the sound quality impact of structural design changes. The link that is established between the interior sound quality and the underlying structural and acoustic phenomena is unique and of major importance in the vibro-acoustic design process. In this paper the sound synthesis approach is discussed with a number of test cases for car and aircraft.
