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Simulation And Experimental Validation Of Airborne And Structure-Borne Noise Transmission In Hvac Plenums, Srinivasan Ramalingam

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

This research demonstrates the usage of numerical acoustics to model sound and vibrational energy propagation in HVAC ducts and plenums. Noise and vibration in HVAC systems propagates along three primary paths that can be classified as airborne direct, airborne indirect and structure-borne. The airborne direct path was simulated using acoustic FEM with special boundary conditions to handle the diffuse acoustic field loading and the baffled termination. The insertion loss for a number of different plenum geometries was compared to published measurement results. Results were in good agreement both below and above the cutoff frequency. Additionally, the airborne indirect path, often …