INTERIOR ROAD NOISE ANALYSIS WITH PRINCIPAL COMPONENTS

As powertrain noise is better and better controlled, road noise inputs become more important. The interior road noise of a car is mainly induced by the wheels rolling over the road surface. Each of the four wheels act as an independent and uncorrelated excitation input. To rank the energy transfer form each input to the interior, a Transfer Path Analysis (TPA) needs to be made-which requires operational vibration measurements. However due to the multiple uncorrelated inputs, phase relations vary continuously. It is therefore necessary to separate the operational data into set of "independent phenomena" by means of a Principal Component Analysis (PCA). A TPA can then be carried out for each independent phenomenon. Operational deflection shapes referenced to these principal components share the physical phenomena. The details of the methodology are discussed and a discussion of the results on a car shows that the method gives accurate results for full vehicle testing.e testing.