Prediction of Sound Radiation from Submerged Cylindrical Shell Based on Dominant Modes

A sound radiation calculation method by using dominant modes is proposed to predict the sound radiation from a cylindrical shell. This method can provide an effective way to quickly predict the sound radiation of the structure by using as few displacement monitoring points as possible on the structure surface. In this paper, modal analyses of a submerged cylindrical shell are carried out by taking the vibration mode of a cylindrical shell in a vacuum, as a set of orthogonal bases. The modal sound radiation efficiency and modal contributions to sound radiation power are presented, and comparison results show that a few modes dominantly contribute to the sound radiation power at low frequencies. These modes, called dominantly radiated structural modes in this paper, are applied to predict the sound radiation power of submerged cylindrical shells by obtaining the modal participant coefficients and sound radiation efficiency of these dominant modes. Aside from the orthogonal decomposition method, a method of solving displacement modal superposition equations is proposed to extract the modal participant coefficients, because few modes contribute to the vibration displacement near the resonant frequencies. Some simulations of cylindrical shells with different boundaries are conducted, and the number of measuring points required are examined. Results show that this method, based on dominant modes, can well predict the low-frequency sound radiation power of submerged cylindrical shells. In addition, compared with the boundary element method, this method can better reduce the number of required measuring points significantly. The data of these important modes can be saved, which can help to predict the low-frequency sound radiation of the same structure faster in the future.