Study on a Hybrid Finite Element-Ray Method for Predicting Broadband Interior Structure-Borne Noise

Interior structure-borne noise directly affects human comfort. Its accurate prediction is key in noise-control engineering. Traditional single numerical methods struggle to balance accuracy and efficiency across the entire frequency range. To address this problem, a broadband prediction method is proposed in this paper, which fuses the low-frequency finite element method with the high-frequency ray acoustics method. A two-dimensional simulation example is constructed for verification. The results show that the ray acoustics method exhibits low sensitivity to mesh size. Its computational characteristics are primarily determined by the number of released rays. In the 400 to 1000 Hz frequency band, the spectral trends of the sound pressure level calculated by the ray acoustics method and the finite element method are generally similar. The mean absolute error of their one-third-octave-band sound pressure level is only 1.14 dB. Under equivalent computational efficiency, the prediction error of the ray acoustics is 1.58 dB lower than that of the finite element method with a coarse mesh, demonstrating superior performance in the high-frequency band.