Computational benchmark on sound transmission through an elastic plate: Comparison between frequency-domain and time-domain approaches

A basic benchmark problem for structural-acoustic simulation is proposed, where considering a sound transmission though an elastic plate mounted on an infinite rigid baffle. As a comparison between frequency-domain and time-domain approaches, the structural FE-acoustic BE coupled approach and the structural-acoustic FDTD approach are tested. As a result, the two numerical approaches were generally validated in computational accuracy. In addition, it was demonstrated. that, if comparable mesh sizes are used, the frequency-domain approach has relatively high accuracy, whereas the time-domain approach has an advantage of obtaining wideband frequency responses with fast computation time and small memory storage. The total computational time with the FDTD method increases in proportion to the number of frequency ranges to approximate the frequency characteristics of loss factor.