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Development of an Acoustic Material Database for Vehicle

Interior Trims

2015-01-0046
SAEA-15AP-0046
Published 03/10/2015

Zhengqing Liu, Mohammad Fard, and Reza Jazar

RMIT University

CITATION: Liu, Z., Fard, M., and Jazar, R., "Development of an Acoustic Material Database for Vehicle Interior Trims," SAE
Technical Paper 2015-01-0046, 2015, doi:10.4271/2015-01-0046.
Copyright 2015 SAE International

Abstract
Characterizing the acoustic properties of sound-absorbing materials is
costly and time consuming. The acoustic material database helps the
automotive designers design their interior trims in accordance with
target level for interior noise. In this paper, a two-microphone
impedance tube was used to measure the normal sound absorption
coefficient. The main parameters that are used in the theoretical
model for interior noise level assessment are investigated. These
parameters include thickness, airflow resistivity, porosity, tortuosity,
viscous and thermal characteristics length. The measured results have
been validated by the theoretical models. The validation of normal
sound absorption coefficient was found to be in agreement with its
corresponding measurement data. Finally, the sensitivity of the sound
absorption coefficient which is related to the physical properties
mentioned above is further analyzed.

Introduction
The acoustic materials are used to absorb vehicle cabin noise by
reducing the amplitude of the reflected sound waves. These materials
are mainly consisted of non-woven fibrous, foams, polyfelt and films.
They are typically mounted on the vehicle roof lining, behind door
trim panels, on the pillar trim, under the carpet and on other interior
lining [1]. Generally, the behaviors of acoustic materials are specified
by the characteristic of their sound absorption coefficient (SAC) and
physical properties [2]. The SAC curve is used to evaluate the
efficiency of sound energy absorbing. The physical properties are
used to predict the acoustic performance in various industrial
applications such as vehicle trimmed body (TB) simulations and
NVH analysis [3, 4]. Therefore, the development of an acoustic
material SAC and physical properties database possess is
considerablely important recently. The acoustic material database can
provide sufficient and reliable resource of SAC performance at early
material comparison and selection stage. On the other hand, the
physical properties are used to predict the interior acoustic
performance for a fully trimmed vehicle.

Over the past few decades, many mathematical models were

proposed to describe the propagation and the sound absorption
performance of acoustic materials. For example, the well-known
Biot's model and Johnson-Champoux-Allard (J-C-A) model were
applied for predicting sound absorption performance in most
commercial numerical software [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. In their models, the
sound absorption coefficient was mostly related to airflow resistivity
(AFR), tortuosity, porosity, viscous and thermal characteristics
length. Their models can be used to predict sound absorption
performance accurately, but it has limited use in practical engineering
applications. The reason is that the parameters used on their models
are difficult to be provided by the manufacturers. Another reason is
the measurement is complex and time consuming. In another study,
the empirical models were usually considered to predict acoustic
performance of sound-absorbing materials. Delany and Bazley (D-B)
studied the acoustic impedance for fibrous materials, and developed
an empirical approach that mainly representative values were AFR
and thickness [10]. Miki revised Delany-Bazley model and made the
impedance function to satisfy the positive-real property [11].
Recently, Komatsu improved the accuracy of D-B and Miki's model
by using common logarithm method. His model was effective for
predicting of high density fibrous materials where f / < 0.01m3/kg
and low density fibrous materials where f / > 0.1m3/kg [12]. In
empirical models, since less parameter is required, they can predict
the SAC effectively. Therefore, most of practical engineering and
researchers uses empirical models on their research.
In this paper, the normal incidence sound absorption coefficient of
selected acoustic materials and their related physical properties are
investigated. The final objective of this study is to develop an
acoustic material database for vehicle interior trim applications. The
database helps the automotive designers compare and select their
interior acoustic materials in accordance with target level for interior
noise provided by OEM. The paper is organized as follows. The
measurement of sound absorption coefficient and theoretical aspects
are summarized in the first section. Then, the measurement results
from direct method and physical properties obtained from indirect
method are presented. The sensitivity of the sound-absorbing

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performance to the physical properties is discussed. An acoustic

material database is developed and the paper is ended with a
conclusion of the present work.

Methodology
Figure 1 shows the overall scheme of this study and each steps are
listed as follows:
1.

The normal SAC of selected materials are firstly measured by

using a two microphone impedance tube test.

2.

The measured normal sound absorption coefficients are then

validated by the theoretical models. In this paper, the complex
J-C-A model and simple Komatsu model are compared.

3.

The thickness, density and AFR are directly measured from

laboratory.

4.

The physical properties such as porosity, tortuosity, VCL

and TCL are obtained from indirect method according to the
measured SAC from impedance tube [13, 14, 15, 16, 17].

5.

The correlation method is compared with measurement and

simulation to find out the most suitable parameters for the
specified materials.

6.

Finally, an acoustic material SAC and physical properties

database have been developed by using Microsoft Access.

Figure 2. The two microphone impedance tube test set-up in laboratory.

Figure 3. Measuring system configuration of impedance tube: (a). Large tube

(100mm) for measuring frequency range 50 - 1600Hz; (b). Small tube (29mm)
for measuring frequency range 500 - 6400 Hz.

According to ASTM E1050-08 standard, the normal incidence sound

absorption coefficient can be obtained by applying the measurement
method of two microphone impedance tube test [18]. Figure 2 shows
the setup of two microphone impedance tube equipment in the
laboratory. The measuring system configuration of the impedance
tube is shown in Figure 3. In this measurement, a large tube with
100mm diameter is used to measure low frequency range (501600Hz), while a small tube with 29mm diameter is used to measure
high frequency range (500-6400Hz). The sound absorption
performance at whole frequency range can be obtained by combining
both large tube and small tube results.
Figure 1. Overall scheme of the study, development of an acoustic material
database.

Material and Measurement

Fibrous materials are selected for measurement in this study as an
example, which are mainly made of polyester staple fibers and
polypropylene fibers. They are low cost, light weight and high sound
absorption capability at high frequency range. Therefore, the fibrous
materials are widely used on today's vehicle interior acoustic design.
In this study, the thicknesses of selected fibrous materials are from
10mm to 20mm in variety. The diameter of test samples are cut into
29mm and 100mm to fit the impedance tube, and the samples are
measured with high and low frequency range, respectively.

In this measurement, a plane sound wave is generated by a

loudspeaker at one side. The test sample is mounted within the tube at
another side. The sound will travel along the impedance tube kit and
will be reflected back as long as it reaches the surface of test sample.
It can determine a standing wave ratio where pressure is measured by
the two pressure microphones [18, 19]. According to the Chung &
Blaser Transfer Function Method [20, 21], the pressure reflection
coefficient R and incidence normal sound absorption coefficient n
can be expressed as the following equations:

(1)

(2)

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where H is corrected transfer function, k is the wave number, l is the

distance between the nearest microphone and test sample, s is the
distance between two microphones. The PULSE software is used in
this study to plot the SAC performance curve for selected materials.
(8)

Physical Properties Identification

The performance of sound-absorbing materials can be assessed with
prior experiment directly, and the AFR () can be measured by using
airflow resistivity test rig based on ASTM C522 standard [22].
However, tortuosity (), porosity (), viscous () and thermal (')
characteristic lengths are very hard to be measured. The test
equipment is costly and extensively sophisticated. Fortunately, the
parameters can be effectively identified by using an indirect inverse
method. Based on the impedance tube measurement and AFR results,
the physical properties can be calculated by using optimization
algorithms [13, 14, 15, 16, 17]. The parameters are the intrinsic
properties because only one set of values can fit the SAC results from
impedance tube. For most porous media, the following bounds can be
applied on the material properties [13]:

(3)

where o is the density of the fluid, Po is the atmospheric pressure,

is the adiabatic exponent, B is the Prandtl number of the fluid. Gj()
and Gj(B2) are transition function related to the angular frequency.
They can be calculated as follows [23]:

(9)

(10)

Therefore the surface impedance Zs and reflection coefficient R can

be expressed as the following equations:

(4)

(11)

(12)
(5)

(13)

(6)

where is the dynamic viscosity of air ( = 1.84 105 kg m1 s1)

Equivalent Models
The predicting sound-absorbing performances of the complex
Johnson-Champoux-Allard (J-C-A) model and simple Komatsu
model are compared in this study. The J-C-A model can reach the
higher accuracy, but it needs more parameters to process. By
comparing, the simple model process is faster and needs less
parameter. The following sections describe the complex J-C-A model
and simple Komatsu model in details.

Johnson-Champoux-Allard Model
In J-C-A model, the porous material is replaced by an equivalent
fluid. The acoustic properties of the equivalent fluid are described as
effective density and effective bulk modules K, which are given by
the following equations [7, 8, 9]:

(14)

where t is the thickness of porous material, co is the sound speed in

air.

Komatsu Model
From empirical equivalent model, the characteristic impedance Zc
and propagation coefficient are used to character the propagation of
sound in a porous material [10]. It can be given as follows:

(15)

(16)

(7)

where Re is the real component, X is the imaginary component, is

the attenuation constant and is phase constant. In the past few years,
many engineers focused on deducing the constant items R, X, ,
based on a lot of experiments. From Komatsu Model, the common
logarithm is used to accurately predict the fibrous material; it is also

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powerful to predict SAC for fibrous materials [12]. The constant

items are affected by the angular frequency and AFR of the material.
They can be obtained by using the following equations:

inverse method. Those parameters have significant influences on the

sound-absorbing performance of porous materials. The sensitivity of
physical parameters will be discussed in this paper.
Table 1. Physical properties of fibrous materials (*direct measured at
laboratory, # indirect method).

(17)

(18)

Correlation Results
(19)

(20)

Finally, the surface impedance can be calculated as follows:

(21)

Results and Discussions

Measurement Results and Physical Properties

Figure 5 shows the comparison between the measured sound

absorption coefficient and the results estimated by JohnsonChampoux-Allard and Komatsu Model for one of fibrous material
- A3. The results show that both J-C-A Model and Komatsu Model
are suitable for predicting SAC of fibrous materials. The J-C-A
Model is more accurate and closer to the experimental measurement.
Most of simulation tools are combined with J-C-A Model. However,
for some purposes, high accuracy is not required. For example, in the
early design stage, the selection of a potentially suitable soundabsorbing material is the main objective. The result also shows that
there is a great agreement between both measurement and simulation
except 1650Hz (shown in the red spot in Figure 5). The reason for
this exception is the structure resonance of the material which was
caused by the excitation. The mean values of simulation error are: A1
(2.3%), A2 (1.8%), A3 and A4 (less than 1%). Therefore, the
accuracy of the correlation between measurement and simulation is
acceptable.

Figure 4. Measured normal sound absorption coefficient for fibrous materials.

Figure 4 shows the measured normal sound absorption coefficients

for the first four fibrous materials. The prefixes A1, A2, A3 and A4,
represent the sound absorption performance of the samples with
different thicknesses and surface weights. The obtained physical
properties of samples are summarized in the Table 1. The thickness,
density and AFR are directly measured in the laboratory, while the
porosity, tortuosity, VCL and TCL are obtained by using indirect

Figure 5. Comparison of normal SAC for test sample-A3 with Komatsu and
J-C-A Model.

Sensitivity of Physical Properties

The sound absorption coefficient is affected by material properties
dramatically. Figure 6 qualitatively shows the effect of the
performance of an acoustic fibrous material due to various factors.

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Acoustical Material Database

Finally, based on the systemic knowledge of porous materials with
their benefits and limitations, an acoustic material database was
developed for interior trim at early design phase. Figure 8 shows the
query tool of an acoustic material database in this study. The
materials can be selected from material types, such like non-woven
fiber, polyfelt, foam etc. The search specifics are based on a given
condition such as thickness, density, AFR. For each retrieved
material, a detail window will be open and displayed all available
systemic knowledge including the specifications of the samples,
sound absorbing coefficient plots, geometric dimensions and physical
properties as well as all types of test results.

Figure 6. The obtained effects of Thickness, Porosity, Tortuosity and AFR on

sound absorption coefficient.

It can be seen that the thicker material has higher absorption ability.
However, at higher frequency range, thickness has less effect on
sound absorption. More porosity at mid-high frequency can lead to
better SAC. For the reason, the sound wave will be further reflected
and absorbed by complex porous structure. Tortuosity improves the
absorption performance at high frequency for fibrous materials. This
is because the more complex the path of acoustic media, the more
time a sound wave spends to contact with the media. It is clear that
more flow resistivity is required to dissipate the sound energy because
the dissipation will take time to come through in a high flow
resistivity material. However, the AFR has a limitation. If the value is
higher than 1000, the performance of sound absorption will be
decreased. It also can be seen that tortuosity mainly affects the
location of the quarter-wavelength peaks, whereas AFR and porous
effect the height and width of the peaks [25].

Figure 8. Query tool of an acoustic material database.

For example, the vehicle roof lining acoustic design requires fibrous
material which the thickness ranges from 10 to 15mm, density less
than 25kg/m3 and AFR around 50000Ns/m4. There are two materials
following up the request. Figure 9 shows the appropriate fibrous
material A1 and A2 for comparison and selection. According to the
comprehensive consideration, it is compared with their sound
absorption performances, physical properties and market prices; one
can be selected as the best suitable material.

Figure 9. Detail window for Fibrous Material A1 and A2.

Figure 7. The obtained effects of Air gap, Multilayered structure and Facing
on sound absorption coefficient.

Figure 7 shows the possible way to improve the sound absorption

coefficient. For some interior applications such as roof panel, it needs
to have a certain air-gap or add a scrim layer to improve SAC at high
frequency. It may also consider that using Nano-fiber layers or
multilayers structures can improve sound absorbing performance at
low-middle frequency bands [24].

At the early interior trim design phase, the material database is

important for determining a cost-benefit relationship. The database
helps engineers compare the performance of different acoustic
materials and make a final selection of material used on interior trim
designs. On the other hand, the physical properties found from the
database will be used to predict the cavity sound pressure responding
of different excitations (structure-born and air-born noise) in a fully
trimmed vehicle. In the future, the new lightweight acoustic materials
will be recommended to use. Their measurement data will be
imported to the database for improving the select range.

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Summary/Conclusions
Development of an acoustic material database will significantly save
time and cost in early design phase of a vehicle. This paper presents a
detailed discussion on characterization of interior acoustic material
and development of an acoustic material database. An impedance
tube was used to measure the normal sound absorption coefficient.
The inverse method was used to find out the physical properties
required for prediction. The accuracy of measurement was checked
by comparing the results from those equivalent models. Good
agreement was observed at mid-high frequency range. The effects of
physical properties were also discussed in this paper. Finally, a
systemic knowledge of sound-absorption materials has been
developed. The database will help engineers control the vehicle
interior noise to enhance the level for specific applications such as
Electric Vehicles (EV) in the future. In addition, the material database
will yield an effective method to enhance vehicle interior component
performance requirements early in the development process.

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Contact Information
Zhengqing Liu
RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia)
s3258887@student.rmit.edu.au
Xiaohan Cui
RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia)
s3364012@student.rmit.edu.au

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