As a kind of low-frequency vehicle interior noise, tire acoustic cavity resonance noise plays an important role, since the other noise (e.g., engine noise, wind noise and friction noise) has been largely suppressed. For the suspension system, wheels stand first in the propagation path of this energy. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the influence of wheel design on the transmission characteristics of this vibration energy. However, currently the related research has not received enough attention. In this paper, two sizes of aluminum alloy wheel finite element models are constructed, and their modal characteristics are analyzed and verified by experimental tests simultaneously. A mathematically fitting sound pressure load model arising from the tire acoustic cavity resonance acting on the rim is first put forward. Then, the power flow method is applied to investigate the resonance energy distribution and transmission characteristics in the wheels. The structure intensity distribution and energy transmission efficiency can be described and analyzed clearly. Furthermore, the effects of material structure damping and the wheel spoke number on the energy transmission are also discussed.

Tire acoustic cavity resonance noise (TACRN) is a typical annoying lower-frequency interior noise of a passenger car. The widely used attenuating method of attaching the porous sound absorption material in tire cavity can reduce TACRN effectively, but causes the increase of tire-wheel assembly weight and cost, also the poor durability. Additionally, the Helmholtz resonator (HR) is also used in the wheel of some cars although having only narrow effective band. The existing investigation shows that the frequency of TACRN varies with the car speed and load and also has the split characteristics. The change of TACRN frequency causes a certain difficulty to suppress TACRN effectively. Aiming at this problem, in this paper, TACRN frequency range of a specific tire cavity under different operating conditions is first calculated and analyzed. Then, for a specific aluminum alloy wheel, a HR assembly including several HRs is designed to make the natural frequencies of HR assembly cover the TACRN frequencies. Finally, the reduction effect of TACRN is simulated and evaluated by comparing the sound fields in tire cavity with/without HR assembly under same volume velocity sound source. This work is helpful for attenuating TACRN effectively under the changing operating conditions.

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Tire acoustic cavity resonance (TACR) noise contributes significantly to interior noise for lower powertrain noise passenger cars and electric cars, which affects the ride comfort obviously. To design sound absorption structures effectively, it is crucial to clarify the evolution mechanism and influence factors of the resonance frequencies and acoustic modal shapes with the running speed. Aiming at these problems, in this paper, a theoretical model of sound wave propagation in a tire acoustic cavity is constructed based on the superposition principle of traveling waves, and the sound field distributions under different rotating speeds are investigated. The formation conditions of TACR are summarized from the perspective of wavenumber. Especially for a rotating tire acoustic cavity, some novel modal characteristics, such as the novel deflective modal shapes and the continuously changing phase, are found. And the theoretical calculation results are verified by the experiment and simulation. The significance of this work is that the evolution mechanisms of TACR frequency and modal shape with the tire rotating speed are theoretically clarified and revealed, which are helpful to obtain effective solutions to suppress TACR noise.