SIMULATION OF ACTIVE NOISE CONTROL IN ENCLOSURES USING DIRECT SOUND FIELD PREDICTION

This paper is concerned with the active control of sound fields in enclosures. Specifically, the numerical problem of determining the optimum locations of control sensors and actuators is addressed. A new method for determining the optimum secondary sources strength is proposed, based on the explicit prediction of the sound field, which makes the simulation of realistic acoustical applications feasible, in terms of the enclosure's boundary conditions. The irregular geometry of a car cabin with complex boundary conditions is used in order to demonstrate the application of the new method to a test case where the existing methods cannot theoretically apply without resolving to significant numerical error. The new method of determining the secondary sources strength is combined with a modified genetic and a gradient optimization algorithm so as to locate the optimum positions of active noise control transducers for global sound field control. The overall algorithm, constituting of the method for calculating the secondary sources' strength and the optimization algorithms, is adjusted with computational improvements for better performance.