Modeling and testing of after-treatment devices

Driven by emission regulations in the US and the EU exhaust systems on new diesel engines are equipped with both a catalytic converter (CC) and a diesel particulate filter (DPF). The CC and DPF are normally placed after each other in an expansion chamber to create a complete after-treatment device (ATD) to reduce the exhaust pollutants. The ATD unit can also affect the acoustical performance of an exhaust system. in this paper an acoustic model of a complete ATD for a passenger car is presented. The model is made up of four basic elements: (i) straight pipes; (ii) conical inlet/outlet; (iii) CC unit, and (iv) DPF unit. For each of these elements, a two-port model is used and, with the exception of the DPF unit, known models from the literature are available. For the DPF unit, a new model suggested by the authors has been used. Using the models, the complete acoustic two-port model for the investigated ATD unit has been calculated and used to predict the sound transmission loss. The predictions have been compared to experimental data taken at cold conditions for various flow speeds and show a good agreement.