Abstract

A technique to predict the acoustic radiation characteristics of the predominant structural modes of an automobile tire is presented. A stationary tire is excited by an electrodynamic vibrator and, through conventional modal analysis methods, a description of the surface velocity is obtained. With this information, and a representation of the tire geometry, numerical procedures are used to predict the acoustic surface intensity and field pressure, for a given frequency of interest, based on a Helmholtz integral formulation. Predicted far field sound pressure levels are in close agreement with experimental measurements taken in an anechoic chamber. This provided the necessary validation of the technique.