The Altair Partner Alliance has announced the expansion of its noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) capabilities with the addition of new partner, Cambridge Collaborative. Cambridge's software, SEAM, uses statistical energy analysis (SEA) to evaluate the dynamic response of complex structures at mid and high frequencies.
Originally developed to study structure-borne noise in submarines in 1980, SEAM has grown to be accepted as an analysis procedure by automobile manufacturers and suppliers, major shipyards, Navy research establishments and aerospace companies. It is used to predict interior noise and vibration in automobiles, aircraft and construction equipment cabs, as well as the radiated noise from ships and the vibro-acoustic environments for spacecraft. Other applications include machinery and industrial noise, as well as building acoustics.
SEAM analyses a complex dynamic system by dividing it into a set of substructures and acoustic elements. These are then grouped into the appropriate modes and SEA subsystems, keeping the flow of energy between them proportional to the modal energies and coupling factors. All coupling factors and power balances for each subsystem are calculated by SEAM. This results in equations that are solved for the modal energy and response of each subsystem.
'Cambridge Collaborative is excited to have the opportunity to partner with Altair,' said Stephen Manning, product manager for SEAM. 'With both companies having more than 20 years’ experience in software development, we will have a tremendous amount of knowledge and energy to contribute in an effort to provide better NVH solutions to the product engineering world.'
