Abstract: In order to solve the false source problem in the noise source identification with the existing methods such as beamforming and acoustic holography, a wave-superposition method based on the genetic algorithm is proposed. The sound pressure signal data are measured with a microphone array, the sound pressure of the source plane is pre-estimated with a time-delay based method; the positions of the equivalent sound sources are set at the peaks of pre-estimated pressure; the 3-dimensional search space is determined according to the pre-estimated results, and the evaluation index is the error function value of the reconstructed sound pressure of the microphones, then, the positions of the equivalent sources are optimized with the genetic algorithm, and the sound field is reconstructed with the wave-superposition method. In the simulation results with this method, the relative strengths of the false sources produced by the side lobe effect are reduced to less than 10% of the real source. The simulations and experiments indicate that the false sources and the side lobe effect in the traditional methods are eliminated effectively; the identified location and the reconstructed sound pressure are more accurate than those acquired by the static wave superposition algorithm.

Key words: Genetic algorithm, Noise source identification, Noise source location, Wave superposition algorithm