Abstract
A new active muffler system has been developed and its superior performance on both noise reduction and engine torque increase is demonstrated with experiment. Main characteristic of the proposed muffler system is the use of destructive interference by transmission path difference of divided exhaust pipes to reduce major exhaust noise components thereby overcoming problems of other active exhaust noise control methods. The exhaust pipe is divided into two sections and joined again downstream. One divided pipe has a sliding mechanism to vary its length, which is controlled to make half wavelength transmission path difference for the major engine rpm frequency. In this system one divided pipe is used to control major rpm frequency and its Harmonics and another pipe is used to control noise component double the frequency of rpm. An after-market tuning muffler, which has very simple internal structure and minimal back pressure, is also installed to remove remaining wideband noise. To make the system to be small enough to be practical, conventional muffler is also installed and used in low rpm range and active muffler is only employed in high rpm range. Noise reduction of the proposed system is comparable to conventional passive muffler. The engine dynamo test has proved the proposed system can recover almost all the torque lost by conventional muffler.
