A Feasibility Study of the Use of PZT Actuators for Active Control to Enrich Engine Sound

Abstract

This study examines the feasibility of a novel active sound enrichment (ASE) system using piezoelectric actuators as sound generators and an inverse control filter to supplement poor engine sound at the driver’s ear location in a passenger car instead of using an interior audio system. The proposed ASE algorithm is developed as a purely feedforward control strategy to track the pre-defined target engine sound (three engine orders). Theoretical and experimental analyses are investigated in-depth on the vibro-acoustic characteristics of a PZT (lead zirconate titanate) actuator bonded on a steel plate and a dedicated control filter to supplement sound using an inverse method to compensate for the secondary path. The location of the PZT-plate actuator was carefully chosen to satisfy the causality condition and robustly stable control of the ASE algorithm. The experimental ASE system was set up in a test car, and the ASE algorithm was implemented in a real-time controller. The real-time ASE experiment results showed that the measured sound of the three orders was well supplemented as the tracking of the target sound was achieved robustly with small errors without any divergent instability. Thus, this study suggests that the proposed ASE system using the PZT-plate actuator and the dedicated control filter is a feasible method for enriching sound in cars, and this approach can be considered as a masking tool against some exotic noise frequently observed in various vehicles including electric vehicles.