In the global framework of improving vibro-acoustic numerical simulations together with the need to decrease the number of prototyping stages, improving the quality for acoustic models becomes increasingly important for many industries such as automotive companies, for instance. This paper focuses on achieving greater accuracy for acoustic numerical simulations by making use of a parametric updating technique, which enables tuning the model parameters inside physically meaningful boundaries. The improved model is used for the next prototyping stages, allowing more accurate results within reduced simulation times. The updating technique used in this paper is based on recent works dealing with the constitutive relation error (CRE) method applied to acoustics. The updating process focuses on improving the acoustic damping matrix related to the absorbing properties of the materials covering the borders of the acoustic domain.
The present study proposes a 2-stage optimization process, which exhibits many advantages. Indeed, the computational time decreases, the frequency interpolation of the material absorbing properties outside the studied frequency range is easily performed, and comparing the correlation of several material absorbing constitutive equations with experimental records is fast.
Additional originality of the work comes with the application of the CRE updating method to a concrete real-life device, while previous works addressed purely numerical setups without experimental data. The test-case is the TRICARMO setup engineered by LMS International in Leuven, Belgium. The TRICARMO setup is a simplified car cabin with rigid walls and car seats inside. Thanks to the 2-stage approach, the material property characterization of the seat is improved by running the updating simulation process using a physical absorbing material model.