On the modeling of sound transmission through a mixed separation of flexible structure with an aperture

Modeling sound transmission among acoustic media through mixed separations, consisting of both rigid/flexible structures with apertures, is a challenging task. The coexistence of both structural and acoustic transmission paths through the same coupling surface adds system complexities, hampering the use of existing sub-structuring modeling techniques when the system configuration becomes complex. In the present work, a virtual panel treatment is proposed to model thin apertures involved in such complex vibroacoustic systems. The proposed virtual panel considers an aperture as an equivalent structural component, which can be integrated with the solid/flexible structure to form a unified compound interface. This allows handling the entire compound interface as a pure structural element, thus providing an efficient and versatile tool to tackle system complexities when using sub-structuring techniques. The accuracy and convergence of the method are investigated and validated, and the effective thickness range allowing for the virtual panel treatments is determined. The capability and the flexibility of the proposed formulation are demonstrated through several numerical examples, with underlying physics being explored.