Analysis and mathematical modelling of industrial truck silencers

The currently low requirements on sound emissions for industrial trucks are expected to be raised in the near future. The company Kalmar Industries AB, which develop, produce and market industrial trucks, want to improve their truck silencers as a precaution to the future harder restrictions and also to improve their competitiveness. The sound emission produced by a vehicle depends on type and range of application it is designed for but the dominant part of the sound is usually produced by the engine and silencer. A new measuring method is developed for studying sound emanating through the silencer system. The analysis of the measurement data establishes that the silencers are not working well. The simulations made with SIDLAB, which is a computer programme for calculating the propagation of sound in ducts, confirms that the silencers are inefficient and that they are simply too small. A simulation which implements a parallel resonator in the main silencer shows that it is possible to make great improvements in reducing the noise from the truck as well as meeting requirements on space. Mathematical modelling based on linearity and one-dimensional interaction between the silencer elementsis advantageous and gives very good results when understanding, analysing and simulating the silencer. The simulation tool SIDLAB works well and saves a lot of time by its fast modelling and easy interface