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On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior using

substitution source

Article  in  International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration · July 2012

DOI: 10.1504/IJVNV.2012.048166

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Int. J. Vehicle Noise and Vibration, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2012 275

On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise

in a car interior using substitution source

Azma Putra*, Fudhail A. Munir and

Clinton D. Juis
Vibration and Acoustics Research Group,
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM),
Hang Tuah Jaya 76100,
Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia
E-mail: azma.putra@utem.edu.my
E-mail: fudhail@utem.edu.my
E-mail: clintondale023@yahoo.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract: From various methods of measuring noise in a motor vehicle, a

technique to separate the airborne and structure-borne noise is of interest as an
important measure to improve the noise control treatment. This paper proposes
a simple technique to measure the contribution of the airborne noise in a
vehicle cabin using substitution source method. A cone loudspeaker was used
as the substitution source and the airborne transfer function was measured.
The technique has successfully separated the airborne transmission with the
intersection frequency at roughly 400 Hz with the structure-borne noise. It is
found that this is independent of the engine speed.
Keywords: airborne noise; structure-borne noise; source substitution; transfer
function; interior noise.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Putra, A., Munir, F.A. and
Juis, C.D. (2012) ‘On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car
interior using substitution source’, Int. J. Vehicle Noise and Vibration, Vol. 8,
No. 3, pp.275–287.
Biographical notes: Azma Putra is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of
Mechanical Engineering, UTeM, Malaysia He received his MSc in 2004 and
PhD in 2008 both from the University of Southampton, UK majoring in Sound
and Vibration. He is now leading acoustics and vibration research in the
faculty. His current interests include engineering acoustics and noise control,
vibro-acoutics, vibration and structural dynamics.
Fudhail A. Munir received his Master of Engineering (Mechanical) in 2009
from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia. His current interest includes
computational fluid dynamics and vehicle transmission. He is now a Lecturer
at the Department of Automotive, UTeM, Malaysia. Prior to his current
position, he held the post of Research and Development Engineer at Perodua
Manufacturing Sdn Bhd which is the second largest automotive manufacturer
in Malaysia.
Clinton D. Juis received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (2011)
majoring in Structure and Materials from UTeM. Much of this work was done
through his final year project.

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

276 A. Putra et al.

1 Introduction

The noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) of a car has been an issue since the past
decades in the automotive engineering. Noise inside the cabin, in particular, becomes an
important parameter judged by the customers. As noise crucially affects the level of
comfort of the passengers, one of the specifications for a good quality car is one having
low interior noise level besides the conventional features such as the car performance
(Thompson and Dixon, 2004). This becomes even more challenging as the modern car
becomes quieter; hence the sensitiveness of the driver to the noise increases (Genuit,
2004).
According to its transmission path, the interior noise can be classified into two
categories, namely structure-borne and airborne noise. A structure-borne noise is resulted
from the propagation of vibration waves in the car structure which then radiates the sound
energy into the cabin. The noise is generated by the car engine, exhaust and other parts
through the mounting points. According to Hanouf and Faris (2009), the excessive
bending modes from the front suspensions are one of significant sources of structure-
borne noise. Meanwhile, the airborne noise is the propagation of sound directly through
the air. The noise is transmitted into the cabin through leakages due to lack of sealing
such as around the door and window seals or grommets in the bulkhead (Harrison, 2004).
The airborne noise can also be indirectly transmitted from the radiation of a vibrating
structure due to impinging sound pressure. Figure 1 shows diagram of their transmission
path.

Figure 1 Diagram of interior noise transmission path (see online version for colours)
 On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior 277

The vibration isolation treatment such as at the engine mounts, subframe mounts and road
springs limits the propagation of the structure-borne noise typically below 500 Hz. At
higher frequencies, the noise enters the cabin via the airborne route. However, this
airborne noise attenuates rapidly by 20 dB/decade with the increasing frequency and is
predominantly controlled by mass (vehicle’s trim, body panel thickness, etc.) which
makes the interior noise dominated by low frequency components (Thompson and Dixon,
2004).
For an effective noise control treatment, separation of these vibro-acoustics paths is
important to find the root causes of the problem. Therefore source identification as well
as accurate measurements are required.

2 Established measurement techniques

Techniques to assess the motor vehicle interior noise are progressively developing. The
classical one is the measurement at several locations including at driver’s ear position and
at the rear cabin as described in British Standard BS 6086-1981 (ISO 5128-1980) (1981).
In this method, the measured sound pressure levels (SPLs) are the mixture between the
structure-borne and airborne noise. In the 1980s, the sound intensity technique was
introduced implementing a two spaced phase-matched microphones where the sound
intensity from a radiating surface can be obtained (Fahy, 1995). This requires a scanning
(BS EN ISO 9614-2: 1997, 1997) or discrete measurements (BS EN ISO 9614-2: 1997,
1997) to yield the sound power level for particular radiator surfaces inside the vehicle
interior, such as the floor, roof or engine cover. As done by Ginn and Gade (1990), the
surface can then be ranked in order of importance as noise source. Saito and Mori (1994)
used the sound intensity measurement to obtain the spatially average vibration velocity
for panels in the interior. The calculation was then made using the numerical analysis of
the sound field. From this, the interior noise level at low frequencies due to only the
structure-borne path was obtained.
Other methods are also invented to find the sources of noise rather than assessment of
the resulting SPL inside the cabin. The signal processing method can be applied using the
so called conditioned spectral analysis (CSA) or virtual spectral analysis (VSA). Several
microphones (and also accelerometers) are required to obtain raw measurement data. In
the CSA, the suspected noise sources are ranked by their signal coherencies (Piersol,
1978). Using the VSA, the contribution of the physical sources to the radiated noise can
be linked through the virtual sources from the virtual coherence which identifies
contributions of each noise source ‘qualitatively’ in particular frequency range (Otte and
Fyfe, 1988; Fouladi et al., 2009).
The most recent technique is the implementation of array of microphones. Among the
famous methods are the beamforming method (Smith et al., 2007; Gerges et al., 2009),
near-field acoustical holography (Maynard et al., 1987; Jacobsen and Jaud, 2007) and the
inverse method (Nelson and Yoon, 2000; Nelson, 2001). These methods provide the
measure of the ‘source strength’ magnitude and enable to localise the noise source
accurately. Identification of sources for both structure-borne and airborne noise can hence
be accurately obtained such as the structure-borne source localisation on a vibrating car
floor as investigated by Hallman et al. (1994) or even complex pass-by noise source
localisation as presented by Gerges and Fonseca (2010). Besides powerful algorithm for
278 A. Putra et al.

processing the measured signals, this technique requires multiple acoustic microphones
(and also amplifier and data acquisition system with multiple channels) to obtain a
reliable data. This technique is more attractive as it can be coupled with video image
processing to give a real-time measurement results.
Other than measurement techniques, several works have also been established to
predict the interior vehicle noise using numerical or semi-analytical methods. For
example, Hafidi et al. (2011) implement truncation of structural modes to determine the
noise transmission through cylindrical shell which can be applied for simulating noise
inside the aircraft cabin. Elwali et al. (2011) use the semi-analytical model, finite element
and boundary element methods to calculate vehicle interior noise transfer functions
responsible for structure-borne path.
This paper presents a simple technique to estimate the airborne noise level in a
car cabin in a stationary condition. In this method, a single acoustic microphone is used
to measure the SPL and a cone loudspeaker is used as the substitution source. The
methodology in the experiment is briefly explained in the next sections.

3 Principle and methodology

3.1 Background theory

As seen in Figure 1, the interior noise is transmitted via two different routes, i.e., from
structure-borne or airborne. Assuming an output Y is a result from an input X through a
transfer function H as a function of frequency f, which can be written as:
Y ( f ) = H ( f )X ( f ) (1)

where in this case, Y can be associated as the noise inside the cabin and X as the total
‘source strength’ from the structure-borne and airborne sound sources. Assuming linear
system where the output can be assumed as superposition of the inputs, equation (1) can
also be expressed as:
Y ( f ) = H ( f ) [ X s ( f ) + X a ( f )] (2)

where Xs is the source strength from the structure-borne sound source and Xa is from
the airborne sound source. Therefore, to separate these source strengths from the
transmission for each source, an ‘independent’ source strength is required to generate the
system transfer function. This transfer function is given by:
Yss ( f )
H( f ) = (3)
X ss ( f )

where Yss and Xss are the output and input (source strength) from the substitution source,
respectively. If the real source is substituted by a source which radiates only airborne
transmission, hence, from equation (2), the output result Ya due to the airborne
transmission from the real source is given by:
⎛ Y (f) ⎞
Ya ( f ) = ⎜ ss ⎟ Xa ( f ) (4)
⎝ X ss ( f ) ⎠
 On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior 279

3.2 Experimental procedures

3.2.1 Exterior and interior noise measurement

The experiments are divided into two parts, where the first is the measurement
of the exterior noise and the second is for the interior noise. Each of it using either
the engine of the car under test as the noise source or using the substitution source,
which in this report, was a small 80 Watt cone loudspeaker. The car used for the
experiment has engine size of 1.6 litres with four cylinders made in 1995. The test was
made outdoor.
Figure 2 shows the experiment setup for measuring the SPL of the exterior
noise. This is aimed to obtain the source strength from the engine noise. For this
purpose, the bonnet was opened. The microphone was located about 1 m from the
bonnet. The engine was then turned on with idle condition. The acoustic pressure was
measured by a 1/2'' GRAS microphone type 40AE which was first calibrated using a
GRAS pistonphone type 42AP. The signal was recorded by a portable analyser LDS-
Dactron Pro-Photon+ and was transferred into the computer for post processing using
Matlab. The same procedure was then repeated for engine with 2,000 rpm, 3,000 rpm and
4,000 rpm.

Figure 2 Measurement setup for exterior noise

When using the source substitution, the loudspeaker was located near the engine facing
upwards as seen in Figure 3 and the engine was turned off. The same procedures were
used as when measuring the engine source strength.
Figure 4 shows the experiment setup to obtain the SPL of the interior noise. The
procedures were repeated as in the exterior noise measurement, but with the car bonnet
now closed. Using the substitution source, the loudspeaker was also placed near the
engine and was now facing towards the cabin. The microphone was located at the
driver’s ear position as seen in Figure 5.
280 A. Putra et al.

Figure 3 Position of the loudspeaker as the substitution source (see online version for colours)

Figure 4 Measurement setup for interior noise

Figure 5 Position of the microphone to measure interior SPL (see online version for colours)
 On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior 281

3.2.2 Data processing

The acoustic pressure p measured by the microphone is presented in decibel (dB) unit as
the SPL calculated by:
⎛| p |⎞
SPL = 20 log10 ⎜ ⎟ (5)
⎝ po ⎠
where po is the reference sound pressure, i.e., 2 × 10–5 Pa. The use of the substitution
source as discussed earlier is to obtain the airborne transfer function, i.e., the transfer
function due to only the airborne component. From equation (3), the transfer function
(in logarithmic scale) can be written as:
T = SPLssext − SPLssint (6)

where SPLssext (proportional to 10 log10 X ss ) is the SPL measured at the exterior and
SPLssint (proportional to 10 log10 Yss ) is the SPL measured in the car interior both
when using the substitution source. Similar as when the engine operates, SPLssext is the
measure of source strength from the substitution source (i.e., loudspeaker). Note that in
equation (6), T is associated with 10 log10 (1/ H ) from equation (3). This is to present T
with the corresponding transmission loss of a panel.
As the transfer function is independent of the strength of the noise source, the SPL
inside the cabin due to ‘only’ the airborne noise can therefore be separated from the total
SPL. As from equation (4), this is calculated by:
SPL airborne = SPLenext − T (7)

where SPLenext is the SPL measured at the exterior when the engine is running on idle
mode (in this case 1,000 rpm), 2,000 rpm, 3,000 rpm and 4,000 rpm.
It should be noted, that the definition of the term ‘source strength’ needs care.
Therefore the measurement of the exterior noise for both the running engine and the
loudspeaker should be done with the same acoustic condition. This is also to maintain
the system linearity to obtain a good estimation of the airborne noise in equations (4) and
(7). The measurement was hence ensured to avoid possible disturbance from background
noise, such as vehicle road noise or wind noise. All results in this paper are presented in
one-third octave frequency bands.

4 Results and analysis

Figure 6 shows the measurement data of the SPL at the exterior and interior of the car
when the engine is running on 2,000 rpm in one-third octave bands. The measured SPL at
the interior (at driver’s ear position) is the mixture of airborne and structure-borne noise.
It can be seen that the total SPL at the interior of the cabin becomes much lower than that
of the exterior above 400 Hz. It also decreases rapidly as the frequency increases. Below
400 Hz, the interior SPL is higher than that of the exterior due to contribution of the
structure-borne noise. The results for idle mode, 3,000 rpm and 4,000 rpm show the same
phenomenon.
282 A. Putra et al.

Figure 6 Measured SPL when the engine is running at 2,000 rpm (see online version for colours)

50
exterior
40 interior

30
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

20

10

-10

-20

-30
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]

Figure 7 shows the SPL measured when the loudspeaker is used as the substitution
source. The SPL inside the cabin is lower compared with that from the exterior for
the whole frequency range. The difference increases as the frequency increases.
The phenomenon below 500 Hz as in Figure 5 vanishes as only airborne noise was
generated.

Figure 7 Measured SPL using the substitution source (see online version for colours)

50
exterior
40 interior

30
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

20

10

-10

-20

-30
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]
 On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior 283

The difference of the measured SPL in Figure 7 is the airborne transfer function
presented in Figure 8 [calculated from equation (6)]. It shows that the measured data
follows the slope of the ‘mass-law’ as for the transmission loss for a panel, i.e., 20 dB per
decade.

Figure 8 Measured airborne transfer function (see online version for colours)
50

40

30
SPL difference [dB]

'mass-law' trend

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]

The results for the airborne noise in comparison with the total interior noise are shown in
Figures 9–12. From all the figures, it can be seen that the airborne noise and structure-
borne noise start to converge roughly above 400 Hz and roll off by 20 dB per decade.
Above this intersection frequency, the difference between the total and the airborne SPL
is less than 5 dB except for the idle condition (see Figure 9) where the difference is
around 15 dB. This is because the airborne penetrated the cabin with less amount of
energy compared with that from higher engine’s rpm.
Therefore above 400 Hz, the interior noise is predominantly transmitted through
the airborne route which can also be seen to decrease as the frequency increases. As
noted by Thompson and Dixon (2004), this attenuation is fully controlled by the ‘mass’
of the car body, i.e., the weight of the car panels plus the absorptive trim materials. The
structure-borne noise dominates below 400 Hz where the total SPL is higher than that of
the airborne noise of about 10–20 dB.
Airborne noise also provides contribution at lower frequencies (Harrison, 2004). A
distinct sharp peak both at total SPL and airborne SPL at low frequencies shows the
contribution from the intake and exhaust gas noise of the engine via the airborne route.
For the four-cylinder engine, this is the second order of the harmonic, 2E where E is the
frequency of the running speed of the engine. For example a peak seen at 100 Hz
when the engine is running at 3,000 rpm (Figure 11) is due to the engine harmonic,
2(3,000 / 60) = 100 Hz. The same peaks can be seen at 30 Hz, 65 Hz and 130 Hz in
Figures 9, 10 and 12, respectively for other engine’s rpm.
284 A. Putra et al.

Figure 13 plots together the estimated SPL of the airborne noise as from
Figures 9–12. This shows that the engine speed (at stationary condition) contributes
significantly for the broadband of airborne noise inside the cabin at high frequencies. The
level increases with the increasing engine speed.

Figure 9 Comparison of total SPL with airborne SPL at idle mode (see online version
for colours)
90
airborne
80 total

70

60
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

50

40

30

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]

Figure 10 Comparison of total SPL with airborne SPL at 2,000 rpm (see online version
for colours)
90
airborne
80 total

70

60
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

50

40

30

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]
 On a simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a car interior 285

Figure 11 Comparison of total SPL with airborne SPL at 3,000 rpm (see online version
for colours)

90
airborne
80 total

70

60
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

50

40

30

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]

Figure 12 Comparison of total SPL with airborne SPL at 4,000 rpm (see online version
for colours)

90
airborne
80 total

70

60
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

50

40

30

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]
286 A. Putra et al.

Figure 13 Estimated SPL of airborne noise for various engine speeds

80
idle(1000 rpm)
70 2000 rpm
3000 rpm
60 4000 rpm

50
SPL [dB ref 2x10-5 Pa]

40

30

20

10

-10
1 2 3 4
10 10 10 10
frequency [Hz]

5 Conclusions

A simple technique to measure the airborne noise in a vehicle cabin has been proposed
using substitution source method. A cone loudspeaker was employed as the substitution
source to measure the airborne transfer function. The airborne noise can be separated
from the total transmission with the intersection frequency at 400 Hz. This transition
frequency is also found to be independent of the speed of the engine. Separation of this
transmission path is useful as a measure of the noise control treatment, for example the
quality of the sealing of gaps or leakages at the bulkhead for the airborne path.
In the experiment, the loudspeaker used produces low sound energy. To obtain a
more accurate ‘transmission loss’ transfer function as in equation (6), it is suggested to
employ a source producing greater sound energy particularly at high frequencies for
sound to penetrate the vehicle cabin optimally. The measurement can also be conducted
in a special room such anechoic chamber to avoid unwanted background noise. For an
advanced measurement, this can be conducted using the engine noise simulator which
resembles the noise emitted from the real engine.

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