Partitioned co-simulation improves vibroacoustic analysis integration with CAD
Partitioned Co-Simulation for CAD-integrated Vibroacoustic Problems in Unbounded Domains
Computational Engineering, Finance, and ScienceSoftware Engineering
Summary
Vibroacoustic analysis studies how structures and sound interact, often using different computer programs that are hard to combine. This paper presents a way to connect a structural solver and an acoustic solver so they work together without needing to merge their code. The method keeps the exact shape from CAD models and improves how these solvers communicate, especially in handling sound wave details like amplitude and phase. The authors tested their approach on benchmark problems, showing it matches more complex methods while being more flexible and efficient.
What this means in practice
- •For acoustic engineers: Couple structural and acoustic simulations directly from CAD models to analyze noise and vibration in exterior environments.
- •For mechanical design teams: Use modular simulation tools that preserve exact geometry during vibroacoustic analysis to improve product design iteration efficiency.
- •For automotive noise control engineers: Enable more robust and faster coupled simulations of vehicle structures and their acoustic fields for noise reduction.$Commercial implications: Develop advanced simulation software for automotive OEMs that improves noise prediction accuracy and reduces development time.
Authors
J. I. Camarotti, P. Le, Y. Cai, R. Aristio, D. Panagiotopoulos, R. Wüchner, E. Deckers
Abstract
Vibroacoustic analysis often requires coupling structural and acoustic solvers based on different numerical formulations and discretizations, making monolithic implementations intrusive and limiting software modularity and reuse. This work presents a partitioned co-simulation framework for exterior vibroacoustic analysis that couples an Isogeometric boundary representation analysis (IBRA) structural solver with an isogeometric boundary element method (IGA-BEM) acoustic solver. The methodology operates directly on the computer-aided design (CAD) boundary representation, preserving the exact geometry throughout the analysis and supporting both weak and strong coupling between non-conforming discretizations. A key contribution is the extension of the Aitken dynamic relaxation and Interface Quasi-Newton with Inverse Least-Squares (IQN-ILS) convergence accelerators to complex-valued interface quantities, allowing the coupling iterations to account directly for both amplitude and phase information. The approach is validated using one-way and two-way coupled vibroacoustic benchmark problems involving thin-shell structures and exterior acoustic domains. The results show excellent agreement with monolithic reference solutions, while the proposed complex-valued convergence accelerators improve the robustness and convergence behavior of the strongly coupled solution procedure without compromising solution accuracy. These results demonstrate that the proposed approach provides an accurate, robust, and modular approach for CAD-integrated frequency-domain vibroacoustic analysis.