A Bridging Technology to Combine Test and Simulation with In-Situ TPA 2020-01-1574

To shorten development processes and to secure decisive product properties as early as possible, new methods for product development are required. These must provide the capability to generate the maximum information about the future product out of available data at the respective development step. Computer-aided engineering (CAE) is therefore becoming increasingly important. It allows prediction of product properties at an early development stage and partial replacement of physical prototypes with numerical models (virtual prototypes). However, the transition from experiment-based methods to numerical approaches is a big and potentially unreliable step. Often, purely-numerical examinations are only applicable to a limited extent because of the following reasons: complex modeling, missing data or input data with major uncertainties, lack of expertise, or development processes not suitable for numerical methods. Therefore, this paper addresses a "bridging technology" that combines the advantages of experiment-based and numerical methods and allows optimal evaluation of the properties of the product to be developed. For this purpose, an excited subsystem with its structural dynamics is represented by Equivalent Forces (EFs) determined based on measured accelerations and by exploiting the in-situ TPA method. In general, EFs are independent of the support structure (e.g., test bench, application environment) of the subsystem. By coupling the EFs with a structural dynamic simulation model, the radiation of the receiver structure is predicted and auralized.