A car muffler is a component of the exhaust system of a car. The exhaust system has mainly 3 functions: 1.

Getting the hot and noxious gas from the engine away from the vehicle 2. Reduce exhaust emission 3. Attenuating the noise output from the engine The last specified function is the function of the car muffler. It is necessary because the gas coming from the combustion in the pistons of the engine would generate an extremely loud noise if it were sent directly in the ambient air surrounding engine through the exhaust valves. There are 2 techniques used to dampen the noise: absorption and reflection. Each technique has its advantages and disadvantages. Absorptive muffler The muffler is composed of a tube covered by sound absorbing material. The tube is perforated so that some part of the sound wave goes through the perforation to the absorbing material. The absorbing material is usually made of fiberglass or steel wool. The dampening material is protected from the surrounding by a supplementary coat made of a bend metal sheet. The advantage of this method is low back pressure with a relatively simple design. The inconvenience of this method is low sound damping ability compared to the other techniques, especially at low frequency. The mufflers using the absorption technique are usually sports vehicle because they increase the performances of the engine because of their low back pressure. A trick to improve their muffling ability consists of lining up several "straight" mufflers Reflector muffler Principle: Sound wave reflection is used to create a maximum amount of destructive interferences Mufflers using the reflection technique are the most commonly used because they dampen the noise much better than the absorber muffler. However they induce a higher back pressure, lowering the performance of the engine (an engine would be most efficient or powerful without the use of a muffler

The upper right image represents a car muffler's typical architecture. It is composed of 3 tubes. There are 3 areas separated by plates, the part of the tubes located in the middle area are perforated. A small quantity of pressure "escapes" from the tubes through the perforation and cancel one another. .

Some mufflers using the reflection principle may incorporate cavities which dampen noise. These cavities are called Helmholtz Resonators in acoustics which are attached to the exhaust pipe. At a specific frequency the cavity will resonate and the waves in the exhaust pipe are reflected back towards the source. Back pressure Car engines are 4 stroke cycle engines. Out of these 4 strokes, only one produces the power, this is when the explosion occurs and pushes the pistons back. The other 3 strokes are necessary evil that don't produce energy. They on the contrary consume energy. During the exhaust stroke, the remaining gas from the explosion is expelled from the cylinder. The higher the pressure behind the exhaust valves (i.e. back pressure), and the higher effort necessary to expel the gas out of the cylinder. So, a low back pressure is preferable in order to have a higher engine horsepower.