Shape optimization of acoustic enclosures based on a Wavelet–Galerkin formulation

Abstract

The problem of the shape optimization of acoustic enclosures is investigated in this paper. A general procedure, comprising a Wavelet-Garlerkin formulation and a so-called vertex-driven shape optimization is proposed to deal with the general problem of internal sound field prediction and the optimization of the boundary shape. It is shown that, owing to the compactly supported orthogonal property and the remarkable fitting ability, Daubechies Wavelet can be used as a global basis to approximate the unknown sound field on a relatively large interval globally instead of piecewise approximation like most of element based methods do. This feature avoids meshing the boundary of the enclosure, although vertex points are needed to define the boundary shape, whose positions keep updating during the shape optimization process. A rectangular enclosure is used as benchmark to assess and validate the proposed formulation, by investigating the influence of some key parameters involved in the formulation. It was shown that the sound pressure along the entire boundary of the rectangular enclosure can be accurately approximated without meshing. The same enclosure with an inner rigid acoustic screen is then used to reduce the sound pressure level within a chosen area through optimizing the shape of the screen, which shows the remarkable potentials of the proposed approach as a shape optimal tool for inner sound field problems.