On the evaluation of commercial FEA software for acoustic performance of complex system

In an internal combustion engine a lot of noise sources exist. Among them, the most prominent are represented by the exhaust noise, which is attenuated by means of mufflers, and the so called breathing noise which is emitted from the inlet section of the intake system. The good project of such systems is a very important task aimed to ensure that the global noise level is below the standards and, at the same time, a good sound quality is perceived from human ears. In general, the most used parameter for characterizing the performance of an acoustic filter is represented by the so called transmission loss parameter which may be easily evaluated from both experimental and numerical point of view. In this paper, a benchmarking study is presented aimed to evaluate the simulation performances of three commercial CAE softwares, in terms of transmission loss prediction of the intake system for a commercial spark ignition engine. The comparison among Virtual Performance Solution® powered by ESI Group, FINE(TM)/Acoustics powered by Numeca Int. and COMSOL Multiphysics®, are then reported. Pros and cons of each software are deeply discussed