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Traffic is a major source of green house gases. The transport field stands for 32 % of the energy consumption and 28 % of the total CO2 emissions, where road transports alone causes 84 % of these figures. The energy consumed by a car travelling at constant speed, is due to engine inefficiency, internal friction, and the energy needed to overcome resisting forces such as aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. Rolling resistance plays a rather large role when it comes to fuel economy. An improvement in rolling resistance of 10 % can yield fuel consumption improvements ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 % for passenger cars and light trucks and 1.5 to 3 % for heavy trucks. The objective of this thesis is to estimate the power consumption in the tyres. To do this a car tyre is modelled with waveguide finite elements. A non-linear contact model is used to calculate the contact forces as the tyre is rolling on a rough road. The contact forces combined with the response of the tyre is used to estimate the input power to the tyre structure, which determines a significant part of the rolling resistance. This is the first rolling resistance model based on physical principles and design data. The elements used in the waveguide finite elements tyre model are derived and validated. The motion of the tyre belt and side wall is described with quadratic anisotropic curved deep shell elements that includes pre-stress and the motion of the tread on top of the belt by curved quadratic, Lagrange type, homogenous, isotropic two dimensional solid elements. The tyre model accounts for: the curvature, the geometry of the cross-section, the pre-stress due to inflation pressure, the anisotropic material properties and the rigid body properties of the rim and is based on data provided by Goodyear. To validate the tyre model, mobility measurements and an experimental modal analysis have been made. The model agrees very well with point mobility measurements up to roughly 250 Hz. The eigenfrequency prediction is within five percent for most of the identified modes. The estimated damping is a bit too low especially for the anti-symmetric modes. The non-proportional damping used in the model is based on an ad hoc curve fitting procedure against measured mobilities. The non-linear contact force prediction, made by the division of applied acoustics, Chalmers University of Technology takes the tyre, the road texture and the tread pattern into account. The dissipated power is calculated through the injected power and the power dissipated within each element. It is shown that a rough road leads to more dissipation than a smooth road. A demonstration on real existing motor ways, for which rolling resistance measurements also have been made, show the potential of the method. The damping is very important for the rolling resistance prediction. The damping properties of the tyremodel are therefore updated based on measurement, equivalent structure modelling and viscoelastic material models. This updated model is slightly better at the point mobility prediction and is far better at predicting the damping level of the identified modes from the experimental modal analysis. / QC 20100722

<p>This thesis concerns a study undertaken on a railway vehicle cooling fan system. Several design modifications were proposed and tested in the laboratory in order to evaluate different noise control measures. The most effective noise control measure involving combining lots of different measures gave 7 dB(A) noise reduction. Furthermore a modification by replacing the axial fan by a radial fan can even reduce the radiated sound power by 10 dB(A). The transfer functions were also examined for a dipole source to acoustic pressure in the far field to evaluate the acoustic loading created by the cooling fan enclosure. One fan was taken out from the complete unit and mounted between two acoustic test chambers to measure the effect of various parameters on the acoustic source strength (power) under controlled conditions. To predict accurate data of radiated sound power for comparison with the experimental work, two models have been developed: one model using the Farassat formula for a rotating dipole and the other model based on a 3D acoustic-vortex model. The heat exchangers in the cooling unit can have a significant effect on sound emitted from a cooling fan. An acoustic model based on so called equivalent fluid model for an anisotropic medium was derived to evaluate the sound transmission and the absorption through a parallel plate type of heat exchanger.</p>

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<p>The collision threshold pressure (CTP), i.e. the smallest amount of subglottal pressure needed for vocal fold collision, has been explored as a possible complement or alternative to the now commonly used phonation threshold pressure (PTP), i.e. the smallest amount of subglottal pressure needed to initiate and sustain vocal fold oscillation. In addition, the effects of vocal warm-up (Paper 1) and vocal loading (Paper 2) on the CTP and the PTP have been investigated. Results confirm previous findings that PTP increases with an increase in fundamental frequency (F0) of phonation and this is true also for CTP, which on average is about 4 cm H₂O higher than the PTP. Statistically significant increases of the CTP and PTP after vocal loading were confirmed and after the vocal warm-up, the threshold pressures were generally lowered although these results were significant only for the females. The vocal loading effect was minor for the two singer subjects who participated in the experiment of Paper 2.</p><p>In Paper 3, the now commonly used audio spectral tilt (AST) is measured on the vowels of a large database (5277 sentences) containing speech of one male Swedish actor. Moreover, the new measure electroglottographic spectral tilt (EST) is calculated from the derivatives of the electroglottographic signals (DEGG) of the same database. Both AST and EST were checked for vowel dependency and the results show that while AST is vowel dependent, EST is not.</p><p>Paper 4 reports the findings from a perception experiment on Swedish accents performed on 47 Swedish native speakers from the three main parts of Sweden. Speech consisting of one sentence chosen for its prosodically interesting properties and spoken by 72 speakers was played in headphones. The subjects would then try to locate the origin of every speaker on a map of Sweden. Results showed for example that the accents of the capital of Sweden (Stockholm), Gotland and southern Sweden were the ones placed correctly to the highest degree.</p> / QC 20100915

This thesis describes the design and implementation process of two applications (PerMORFer and MoodifierLive) for the interactive manipulation of music performance. Such applications aim at closing the gap between the musicians, who play the music, and the listeners, who passively listen to it. The goal was to create computer programs that allow the user to actively control how the music is performed. This is achieved by modifying such parameters as tempo, dynamics, and articulation, much like a musician does when playing an instrument. An overview of similar systems and the problems related to their development is given in the first of the included papers. Four requirements were defined for the applications: (1) to produce a natural, high quality sound; (2) to allow for realistic modifications of the performance parameters; (3) to be easy to control, even for non-musicians; (4) to be portable. Although there are many similarities between PerMORFer and MoodifierLive, the two applications fulfill different requirements. The first two were addressed in PerMORFer, with which the user can manipulate pre-recorded audio performance. The last two were addressed in MoodifierLive, a mobile phone application for gesture-based control of a MIDI score file. The tone-by tone modifications in both applications are based on the KTH rule system for music performance. The included papers describe studies, methods, and algorithms used in the development of the two applications. Audio recordings of real performance have been used in PerMORFer toachieve a natural sound. The tone-by-tone manipulations defined by the KTH rules first require an analysis of the original performance to separate the tones and estimate their parameters (IOI, duration, dynamics). Available methods were combined with novel solutions, such as an approach to the separation of two overlapping sinusoidal components. On the topic of performance analysis, ad-hoc algorithms were also developed to analyze DJ scratching recordings. A particularly complex problem is the estimation of a tone’s dynamic level. A study was conducted to identify the perceptual cues that listeners use to determinethe dynamics of a tone. The results showed that timbre is as important as loudness. These findings were applied in a partly unsuccessful attempt to estimate dynamics from spectral features. The manipulation of tempo is a relatively simple problem, as is that of articulation (i.e. legato-staccato) as long as the tone can be separated. The modification of dynamics on the other hand is more difficult, as was its estimation. Following the findings of the previously mentioned perceptual study, a method to modify both loudness and timbre using a database of spectral models was implemented. MoodifierLive was used to experiment with performance control interfaces. In particular, the mobile phone’s built-in accelerometer was used to track, analyze, and interpret the movements of the user. Expressive gestures were then mapped to corresponding expressive music performances. Evaluation showed that modes based on natural gestures were easier to use than those created witha top-down approach. / QC 20110607

Traffic is a major source of environmental noise in modern day's society. As a result, the development of new vehicles are subject to heavy governmental legislations. The major noise sources on common road vehicles are engine noise, transmission noise, tire noise and, at high speeds, wind noise. One way to reduce intake and exhaust noise is to attach mufflers to the exhaust pipes. However, to develop prototypes for the evaluation of muffler performance is a costly and time-consuming process. As a consequence, in recent years so called virtual prototyping has emerged as an alternative. Current industrial simulation methodologies are often rather crude, normally only including one-dimensional mean flows and one-dimensional acoustic fields. Also, flow generated noise is rudimentary modeled or not included at all. Hence, improved methods are needed to fully benefit from the possibilities of virtual prototyping. This thesis is aimed at the development of simulation methodologies suitable both as industrial tools for the prediction of the acoustic performance of flow duct systems, as well as for analyzing the governing mechanisms of duct aeroacoustics. Special focus has been at investigating the possibilities to use frequency-domain linearized Navier-Stokes equations solvers, where the equations are solved either directly or as eigenvalue formulations. A frequency-domain linearized Navier-Stokes equations methodology has been developed to simulate sound propagation and acoustic scattering in flow duct systems. The performance of the method has been validated to experimental data and analytical solutions for several cases of in-duct area expansions and orifice plates at different flow speeds. Good agreement has generally been found, suggesting that the proposed methodology is suitable for analyzing internal aeroacoustics. / QC 20110517

Some aspects and properties of the lateral vibration of sandwich beams are investigated, including the concept of apparent bending stiffness and shear modulus, allowing the sandwich beam dynamics to be approximately described by classical beam theory. A sixth order beam model is derived including boundary conditions, and the free and forced response of some beam configurations analyzed. The possibility of computing material parameters from measured eigenfrequencies, i. e. inverse analysis, is considered. The higher order model is also utilized for investigation of the energy propagation through sandwich composite beams and the transmission over different junctions. / QC 20100630

The downscaling and integration of biomedical analyses onto a single chip offers several advantages in speed, cost, parallelism and de-centralization. Acoustic radiation forces are attractive to use in these applications since they are strong, long-range and gentle. Lab-on-a-chip operations such as cell trapping, particle fluorescence activated cell sorting, fluid mixing and particle sorting performed by acoustic radiation forces are exploited in this thesis. Two different platforms are designed, manufactured and evaluated.

For an accurate prediction of the low and medium frequency surface vibration and sound radiation behaviour of porous materials, there is a need to improve the means of estimating their elastic and acoustic properties. The underlying reasons for this are many and of varying origin, one prominent being a poor knowledge of the geometric anisotropy of the cell microstructure in the manufactured porous materials. Another one being, the characteristic feature of such materials i.e. that their density, elasticity and dissipative properties are highly dependent upon the manufacturing process techniques and settings used. In the case of free form moulding, the geometry of the cells and the dimensions of the struts are influenced by the rise and injection flow directions and also by the effect of gravity, elongating the cells. In addition the influence of the boundaries of the mould also introduces variations in the properties of the foam block produced. Despite these complications, the need to predict and, in the end, optimise the acoustic performance of these materials, either as isolated components or as part of a multi-layer arrangement, is growing. It is driven by the increasing demands for an acoustic performance in balance with the costs, a focus which serves to increase the need for modelling their behaviour in general and the above mentioned, inherent, anisotropy in particular. The current work is focussing on the experimental part of the characterisation of the material properties which is needed in order to correctly represent the anisotropy in numerical simulation models. Then an hybrid approach based on a combination of experimental deformation, strain field mapping, flow resistivity measurement and physically based porous material acoustic Finite Element (FE) simulation modelling is described. This inverse estimation linked with high quality measurements is crucial for the determination of the anisotropic coefficients of the porous materials is illustrated here for soft foam and fibrous wool materials. / QC 20100729