Simulative and experimental investigations on pressure-induced structural vibrations of a rear muffler

The periodically blown out exhaust gas of a combustion engine may excite structural vibrations of the exhaust system. In addition to the noise of the orifice, these vibrations contribute to the overall noise radiation of the exhaust system. In this work, the excitation of structural vibrations of a rear muffler via the acoustic path is investigated both in experiments and simulations. In both cases transfer functions from the acoustic pressure at the inlet to the structural deflection on the surface of the rear muffler are determined and compared to each other. For the simulation an FE-FE (finite element) coupling is applied to account for the fluid-structure interaction. To efficiently predict the fluid-structure coupled behavior, a model reduction technique for the finite element method based on the Craig-Bampton method and the Rubin method is presented. In a last step, the sound radiation is evaluated by solving the exterior acoustic problem with the fast multipole boundary element method. For this purpose, the results of the FE computation are used as boundary datum.