New Schffler Testing Facilities for Competence Center Acoustics

2013-12-02 | 000-004-714 DE-EN

SCHAEFFLER AG, HERZOGENAURACH

New Schaeffler Testing Facilities for Competence Center Acoustics

Schaeffler has expanded its Competence Center Acoustics within the Technical Development Center in Herzogenaurach by adding an acoustic testing facility. Equipped with state-of-the-art measurement and computer technology, three test rooms and a so-called wobble room have been installed in 180 square meters of floor space.

CTO Prof. Dr. Peter Gutzmer is delighted with the new facilities: This is an audible and tangible further extension of expertise at Schaeffler. With the new Herzogenaurach acoustic center, we have created optimal conditions to further optimize the globally networked development activities at Schaeffler and adapt to customer needs even better than before.

Especially in the field of drive technology, customers are paying more and more attention to low friction coupled with quiet operation of the individual system components, and this is also true for bearings in electric motors and devices in the home and office environments.

Schaeffler engineers in the Competence Center Acoustics investigate the origins of irritating noise using the latest state-of-the-art analytical methods and give valuable clues as to where and how noise is generated and what can be done to eliminate it right at the beginning of development. Typical tasks include, for example investigations of airborne sound and vibration behavior in the vehicle drive train, as well as in the chassis and its components, such as ball screw drives and roll stabilizers. In addition, the engineers also examine plain bearings and rolling bearings of all types and designs that are used in production machinery, wind turbines and hydroelectric power plants as well as in railway, medical technology or household applications.

Service and development partner for sound testing

Dr. Arbogast Grunau, Senior Vice President Corporate R&D Competence and Service, regards the Schaeffler Group's acoustic network, which also includes the team at the Competence Center Acoustics in Herzogenaurach, as a service and development partner for all kinds of sound and vibration testing and corresponding optimization: The expertise concentrated here is the result of long-standing experience in product and system development and it is continuously being developed further. This ensures that acoustic issues from all areas of automotive and industrial engineering can be addressed quickly and competently. Dr. Grunau adds: We use our network of competence to spread our knowledge and experience throughout the world, with training and seminars being an important medium. In this way we make an important contribution to Schaeffler's global alignment, true to our motto Together we move the world' - here with a particular focus on noise optimization.

Premises and equipment

Our extensive equipment includes a high-quality air- and structure-borne sound sensor system, vibrometry, high-speed cameras and several calculating and simulation tools including analysis software, says Dr. Alfred Pecher, Manager Testing Competence Center Acoustics.

A special feature of the test rooms, which include a large acoustic vehicle test bay, a room for fatigue tests and a shop with extensive adaptation options, is the room-in-room concept . Covering a floor space of between 30 and 50 square meters, the rooms are spring-mounted cuboids that can move independently from the rest of the building. This means they are decoupled from the oscillation of the rest of the building. The largest room weighs more than 130 tons. And what's more: The walls of the interior rooms were required to be of particularly high density (at least 2,400 kg/m ) - special bricks from Sweden were used for this purpose. The interior ceilings and walls of the test rooms are lined with up to 35 cm thick acoustic broadband compact absorbers to meet the sensitive metrological requirements of the acoustic staff.

Thanks to this constructional measure it has also been possible to reduce noise intruding into the test rooms from outside, such as the sounds of trucks passing by, to a minimum and to obtain technically accurate measurement results, says Dr. Alfred Pecher.

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