A comparison between analytic and numerical methods for modelling automotive dissipative silencers with mean flow

Identifying an appropriate method for modelling automotive dissipative silencers normally requires one to choose between analytic and numerical methods. It is common in the literature to justify the choice of an analytic method based on the assumption that equivalent numerical techniques are more computationally expensive. The validity of this assumption is investigated here, and the relative speed and accuracy of two analytic methods are compared to two numerical methods for a uniform dissipative silencer that contains a bulk reacting porous material separated from a mean gas flow by a perforated pipe. The numerical methods are developed here with a view to speeding up transmission loss computation, and are based on a mode matching scheme and a hybrid finite element method. The results presented demonstrate excellent agreement between the analytic and numerical models provided a sufficient number of propagating acoustic modes are retained. However, the numerical mode matching method is shown to be the fastest method, significantly outperforming an equivalent analytic technique. Moreover, the hybrid finite element method is demonstrated to be as fast as the analytic technique. Accordingly, both numerical techniques deliver fast and accurate predictions and are capable of outperforming equivalent analytic methods for automotive dissipative silencers.