Stochastic BEM for the Vibroacoustic Analysis of Three-Dimensional Structures

Nowadays, extending the NVH prediction reliability to the whole frequency range is an attractive goal of vibroacoustics. Deterministic methodologies are well established for the low-frequency range, but, decreasing the wavelength, energy-based methods are necessary. In such a range, a crucial role is played by small perturbations which highly influence the response sensitivity. Moreover, taking into account these variations allows to make the product design more robust and even quicker. Introducing geometrical uncertainties within the classic BEM formulation allows to obtain the so-called stochastic BEM. As a result, the solution shows deterministic behaviour at low frequencies; decreasing the wavelength, the effect of the uncertainties smooths the response. Consequently, it is possible to obtain an averaged trend over the whole frequency range which asymptotically tends to the deterministic one. In this paper, we deal with three-dimensional acoustic SBEM. First, the formulation and its basic assumptions are presented. Secondly, they are applied to academic cases to show its potentialities in predicting vibroacoustic behaviour over a wide frequency range.