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A hybrid strategy of OTPA and machine learning for efficient root-cause analysis of NVH in multi-source systems

Sharif Khakshournia, Shaygan Shahed Haghighi, Marzie Majidi, Farhad Najafnia, Hamed Haddad Khodaparast Orcid Logo

Applied Acoustics, Volume: 242, Start page: 111060

Swansea University Author: Hamed Haddad Khodaparast Orcid Logo

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Abstract

The growing awareness of health benefits, along with the competitive emphasis on vehicle comfort, has led automakers to place greater attention on reducing Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH). One of the most beneficial techniques for NVH engineers to identify, rank, and eliminate dominant noise a...

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Published in: Applied Acoustics
ISSN: 0003-682X 1872-910X
Published: Elsevier BV 2026
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa70543
Abstract: The growing awareness of health benefits, along with the competitive emphasis on vehicle comfort, has led automakers to place greater attention on reducing Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH). One of the most beneficial techniques for NVH engineers to identify, rank, and eliminate dominant noise and vibration sources and paths is Transfer Path Analysis (TPA). Unlike traditional TPA, Operational Transfer Path Analysis (OTPA) requires neither the preliminary acquisition of the transfer matrix between excitation and response points nor the measurement of forces transferred through the active and passive side connection points. Although the OTPA method offers significant advantages over classical TPA methods, it still faces challenges such as data loss caused by the pseudo-inversion of the indicator matrix. In this paper, we estimate the transmissibility matrix using a machine learning-based regression algorithm (random forest). We demonstrated that machine learning is an effective alternative to the truncated Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) method for estimating the transmissibility matrix, as it is a swift solution that preserves essential information in the indicator matrix. The efficiency of the method has been verified by a 2.28 % improvement in the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) of the driver’s ear noise of a sedan-type vehicle through the modification of the most critical path found by this approach.
Keywords: Operational transfer path analysis; Random forest; NVH diagnosis; Sensitivity analysis; Machine learning; Contribution analysis
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: Swansea University
Start Page: 111060