Vibro-acoustic modeling of a rectangular enclosure with a flexible panel in broad range of frequencies and experimental investigations

In this paper, unlike the existing studies, vibro-acoustic modeling and analysis of a rectangular acoustic cavity bounded by a flexible panel is conducted by three modeling techniques in a broad frequency range (up to 6.4 kHz). The finite element method (FEM) and statistical energy analysis (SEA) are employed at the low and high frequency range respectively. For the mid-frequency range, a hybrid FE-SEA method is employed to deal with the drawbacks in application of single deterministic or statistical methods. In this case, studies of the interior sound pressure and panel vibration responses for the structure-acoustic coupled system are made under external normal concentrated force acting at the flexible plate. And then comparisons are used to validate the three models and verify their accuracy through experimental investigations. Deviations between the numerical and test results are also discussed.