Vibro-acoustic analysis procedures for the sound insulation characteristics of agricultural machinery cabins

Over the last few years, customer demands regarding acoustic performance, along with the tightening of legal regulations on noise emission levels and human exposure to noise, have made the noise and vibration properties into important design criteria for agricultural machinery cabins. In this framework, both experimental analysis procedures for prototype testing as well as reliable numerical prediction tools for early design assessment are compulsory for an efficient optimization of the cabin noise and vibration comfort. This paper discusses several numerical approaches, which are based on the finite element and boundary element method, in terms of their practical use for airborne sound insulation predictions. To illustrate the efficiency and reliability of the various vibro-acoustic analysis procedures, the numerical procedures are applied for the case of a harvester driver's cabin and validated with experimental results.status: publishe