Car Door Sound Quality Assessment - A Review for NVH Performance Research

Abstract

Customer comfort in terms of NVH is a tangible and in-tangible effect. NVH is directly and indirectly connected to the psychoacoustics of human beings and lives. As a part of the advanced NVH analysis, the effects of noise have been studied in terms of psychoacoustic parameters such as loudness, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation strength, tonality, etc. Car door or door assembly is an integral part of the car or vehicle. The door is softly and flexibly connected to the main body of the vehicle; it protects passengers from weather effects and accidental impacts. Because of the inherent flexibility of the door, its flexible connections, sharp - transient closing, and vehicle operational excitations, the door assembly is one of the main sources of noise and vibration in vehicles. It is a prime requirement to understand the NVH effect of doors on vehicles, its analysis and ways of improvement. To understand the current status of the basic and advanced NVH analysis of the door, an extensive survey and in detail study was conducted. The main focus is given on technical papers published related to noise/ sound quality (SQ) during the last two decades, i.e., between 1999 – 2022. Total 31 technical papers were scrutinized and summarized in different categories. Broadly divided into: the number of papers published each year, Number of papers on types of SQ assessment, and the number of papers discussed SQ parameters. This study of these 31 papers published between 1999 – 2022 has given a ready reference for the work done on sound quality, mainly related to the vehicle and its door NVH. The total number of parameters considered by different researchers and approaches used by them to assess the psychoacoustic parameters of noise/ sound. Finally, these parameters and their level help to determine the quality of the sound produced or generated by any source.