A study on how small changes to vehicle panel boundary conditions vary the overall system response

An experimental investigation carried out on a luxury sedan door observed the effect of making small changes to trim boundary conditions by removing and replacing a series of small polymer clips that held the trim to the aluminium door. Structural testing was carried out by exciting the system with a shaker and recording the response with accelerometers placed at three different locations about the door. Acoustic response measurements were also taken with the use of a sound intensity probe. The study found that the removal of even a single clip could vary the response significantly for certain clip locations. The spread of structural data was also found to range by more than 15 dB for certain frequency bands. Similar large deviations were observed for the noise transfer response measurements. This is significantly large spread of data for what might be perceived as a relatively small change to the structure, highlighting the importance of reduced variability at material joints.