Statistical Energy Analysis Applications for Structureborne Vehicle NVH 2010-36-0526

Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) is an established high-frequency analysis technique for generating acoustic and vibration response predictions in the automotive, aerospace, machinery, and ship industries. SEA offers unique NVH prediction and target-setting capabilities as a design tool at early stages of vehicle design where geometry is still undefined and evolving and no prototype hardware is available yet for testing. The exact frequencies at which SEA can be used effectively vary according to the size and the amount of damping in the vehicle subsystems; however, for automotive design the ability to predict acoustic and vibration responses due to both airborne and structure-borne sources has been established to frequencies of 500 Hz and above.

This paper presents the background, historical use, and current industrial applications of structure-borne SEA. The history and motivation for the development of structure-borne SEA are discussed. The theoretical formulation and early laboratory validation studies are described. Early and current applications of structure-borne SEA for ship, machinery, aerospace, and automotive industry are presented. Examples illustrating typical and expected accuracy of mean response and variance compared to measurement are given. The advantages and limitations to using structure-borne SEA are summarized. Hybrid techniques with the ability to extend the accurate prediction range using SEA together with test or FEA data are presented.