Prediction of intake noise of an automotive engine in run-up condition

It is very important to predict the radiated noise from the engine intake system for the effective noise control and virtual prototyping of in-cavity and outdoor noise of a vehicle. To this end, one should precisely measure the in-duct acoustic source parameters of the intake system, viz., source strength and source impedance. Usually, the noise radiation characteristics need to be expressed as a function of engine speed. In this study, acoustic source parameters of an engine intake system under engine run-up condition were measured by using the direct method. Direct method employed two external loudspeakers, turned on simultaneously, and three microphones for the separation of upstream and downstream wave components. It was noted that the frequency spectra of source impedance hardly changes with the increase of engine speed. Utilizing this fact, source strength under the engine run-up condition was calculated by assuming invariant source impedance. Predicted insertion loss and radiated sound pressure level using the measured source parameters were compared with those of measured data and predicted data using several idealized source models, which have been adopted for the calculations. A reasonably good agreement was observed between measured sound spectra at the intake orifice and predicted one using the measured source data. It was shown that the source data obtained by the present method yielded a far better prediction accuracy than those by the idealized source models.