Peak Performance, Powerful Sound - Altair® ultraFluidX® Speeds up Development of New Motorbike Muffler Design

In developing a new exhaust system, KTM's NVH Simulation team focused on evaluating the transmission loss of a new muffler design. To achieve effective noise reduction while maintaining performance targets and customer expectations, the team needed to predict the pressure distributions and damping characteristics of the new muffler design, allowing them to compare simulation results with real test bench data. To meet these objectives, they required a solution capable of performing detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational aero-acoustics (CAA) simulations. KTM identified Altair® ultraFluidX® as a suitable tool and initiated their first simulation runs. The team modelled the complete exhaust system for a V2 engine and performed a transmission-loss simulation, replicating the physical test bench setup. They analyzed the frequency range to ascertain which frequencies were attenuated and by what amount. Getting first results was very easy, and ultraFluidX delivered highly accurate predictions of pressure distributions and damping characteristics, showing strong correlation with test-bench data.