Meta Design: Next level of acoustic insulation in automotive industry
Mercedes-Benz, Phononic Vibes and Adler Pelzer partner up to create light weight metamaterials for increased acoustic insulation performance.
Phononic Vibes is offering a hardware solution that allows its customers to enhance acoustic insulation while lowering the weight at the same time.
Challenge
For decades vehicle acoustic insulation was all about weight and thickness of raw materials used. The transmission loss is directly linked to the mass per unit area: the heavier the better. Lightweight solutions were always linked to a loss in acoustic performance. Until now, no solution was available for this. It became even more of an issue with the transformation to electric mobility and the increasing demand for lightweight vehicles. . Electric vehicles offer the benefit of a quiet ride. This in turn increases the demand for even better acoustic insulation due to the lack of masking sound levels from the combustion engine.
Solution
Phononic Vibes invented a material called Meta Design. It allows to redistribute mass from the heavy layer of the acoustic insulation in a periodic manner that enhances the acoustic insulation properties. Thereby, the overall material used can be reduced by approximately 25%. The metamaterial effect of Meta Design origins from designed mechanical multiple resonances.Alder Pelzer contributed to the project their proprietary production technology to produce these periodically distributed masses. The metamaterial effect form Meta Design has proven itself in a PoC with flat samples and handmade prototype parts in a car.
Impact
Today, Meta Design is the world first metamaterial application in the automotive industry that is planned to be used in series production. Meta Design, applied to an acoustic insulation part, has proven to have less weight but still enhanced acoustic performance.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Johannes Weiss and Bernard Zobec from Mercedes-Benz, Maurizio Tarello from Adler Pelzer and Luca D’Alessandro from Phononic Vibes.
Contact for the project
Tim Solle, Ventures Mobility
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Read the story behind Phononic Vibes and its founding members here.
