Low frequency impact sound transmission in dwellings through homogeneous concrete floors and floating floors

An experimentally validated analytical model has been developed in order to investigate the effect on impact sound transmission at low frequencies of location of the impact, type of floor, edge conditions, floor and room dimensions, position of the receiver and room absorption. The model was developed in order to allow rapid repeated calculations necessary for a parametric survey, described in a companion paper. The analytical model uses natural mode analysis to predict the sound field generated in rectangular rooms by point sound sources and the point excitation of homogeneous rectangular plates with different edge conditions. A floor-room model of the sound field generated in a room by a vibrating floor also has been derived. Laboratory and in situ measurements confirm that the models can be used to estimate impact sound transmission at low frequencies. The approach applies to homogeneous simply supported base plates of uniform thickness with homogenous floating floors, which again were experimentally validated in the laboratory and in situ.     

空气中声源激发浅海水下声场传播特性的实验研究

为了获得空气中远距离声源激发水下声场的精细结构,2013年3月,声场声信息国家重点实验室在南海海域进行了一次空气中声源激发水下声场的实验。采用汽笛作为空气声源,海底放置水听器作为接收,在实验过程中,发射船由距离水听器2.4 km处行驶至9.8 km。本文对该次实验数据进行分析,获得了收发距离远达9.8 km、频率分别为128 Hz和256 Hz的声传播损失曲线,该曲线随传播距离变化存在清晰的震荡结构.利用波数积分方法计算实验环境下的水下声场理论值,并对获得的声场传播特性进行了较好的物理解释。     

Experimental analysis on air-to-water sound transmission loss in shallow water

The research of propagation characteristics of air-to-water sound transmission is of great importance to the detection of aerial targets from underwater.In order to study the propagation characteristics of air-to-water sound transmission in shallow water,State Key Laboratory of Acoustics,Institute of Acoustics,conducted an experiment in the South China Sea in March,2013.During the experiment,multi-frequency signals transmitted by a hooter hung on a research ship were received by an underwater hydrophone,and the distance between the hooter and the hydrophone was from 2.4 km to 9.8 km approximately.Through analyzing experimental data in this work,the experimental air-to-water transmission loss at frequencies128 Hz and 256 Hz is estimated up to 9.8 km in range,and its oscillation structure is evident.The wave-number integration approach is used to simulate theoretical air-to-water transmission losses,which are in good agreement with experimental values and to explain the experimental air-to-water sound transmission characteristics.     

Experimental and numerical analysis of Izod impact test of cortical bone tissue

Bones can only sustain loads until a certain limit, beyond which they fail. Usually, the reasons for bone fracture are traumatic falls, sports injuries, and engagement in transport or industrial accidents. A proper treatment of bones and prevention of their fracture can be supported by in-depth understanding of deformation and fracture behavior of this tissue in such dynamic events. In this paper, a combination of experimental and numerical analysis was carried out in order to comprehend the fracture behavior of cortical bone tissue. Experimental tests were performed to study the transient dynamic behavior of cortical bone tissue under impact bending loading. The variability of absorbed energy for different cortex positions and notch depths was studied using Izod impact tests. Also, Extended Finite-Element Method implemented into the commercial finite-element software Abaqus was used to simulate the crack initiation and growth processes in a cantilever beam of cortical bone exposed to impact loading using the Izod loading scheme. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental data.     

Experimental and numerical study on the propagation of impulsive sound around buildings

Propagation of impulsive sound around buildings and induced structural loading are investigated experimentally and numerically. Experiments were conducted on a rectangular building at Virginia Tech using sonic booms generated by shaped charges with an explosive weight of 0.78 kg, constructed from detonation cord. These experiments were simulated with a three-dimensional numerical model, in the context of geometrical acoustics (GA), by combining the image source method for the reflected field (specular reflections) with an extension of the Biot–Tolstoy–Medwin (BTM) method for the diffracted field. In this model, it is assumed that the acoustic propagation is linear and that all surfaces are acoustically rigid. This numerical model is validated against a boundary element (BE) solution and experimental data, showing a good overall agreement. The key advantages of this GA modeling approach for this application include the ability to model large three-dimensional domains over a wide frequency range and also to decompose the sound field into direct, reflected, and diffracted components, thus providing a better understanding of the sound-propagation mechanisms. Finally, this validated numerical model is used to investigate sound propagation around a cluster of six rectangular buildings, for a range of elevated source positions simulating sonic booms from aircraft.     

The effect of dissipation on quantum transmission resonance

Quantum transmissions of a free particle passing through a rectangular potential barrier with dissipation are studied using a path decomposition technique. Dissipative processes strongly suppress the transmission probability at resonance just above the barrier resulting in an unexpected reduction of the mean traversal time through the potential barrier.     

Acoustic transmission analysis on cavity resonance sound in a cylindrical cavity system: application to a Korean bell

This paper presents an analytical model for acoustic transmission characteristics of a cylindrical cavity system representing the acoustic resonance conditions of a Korean bell. The cylindrical cavity system consists of an internal cavity, a gap, an auxiliary cavity, and a rigid base. Since the internal cavity is connected to the external field through a gap, determination of the acoustic transmission characteristics becomes a coupling problem between the internal cavity and external field. The acoustic field of the internal cavity is considered by expanding the solution method of the mixed boundary problem, and the external field is addressed by modifying the radiation impedance model of a finite cylinder. The analytical model is validated by comparison with both experiment and a boundary element method. Using the analytical model, the resonance conditions are determined to maximize the resonance effect. Thus, the resonance frequencies of the bell cavity system are investigated according to the gap size and auxiliary cavity depth. By adjusting gap size or auxiliary cavity depth, the cavity resonance frequency is tuned to resonate partial tones of the bell sound. Finally, the optimal combination of gap size and auxiliary cavity depth is determined.     

Assessment of a simplified experimental procedure to evaluate impact sound reduction of floor coverings

The impact noise reduction provided by floor coverings is usually obtained in laboratory, using the methodology described in the standard EN ISO 140-8, which requires the use of standard acoustic chambers. The construction of such chambers, following the requirements described in the EN ISO 140-1, implies a significant investment, and therefore only a limited number exists in each country. Alternatives to these standard methodologies, that allow a sufficiently accurate evaluation and require lower resources, have been interesting many researchers and manufacturers. In this paper, one such strategy is discussed, where a reduced sized slab is used to determine the noise reduction provided by floor coverings, following the procedure described in the ISO/CD 16251-1 technical document. Several resilient coverings, floating floors and floating slabs are tested and the results are compared with those obtained using the procedures described in the standards EN ISO 140-8 and EN ISO 717-2.     

Mechanism and calculation of the niche effect in airborne sound transmission

The goal is to interpret and calculate the "niche effect" for the airborne sound transmission through a specimen mounted inside an aperture in the wall between the source and receiving reverberation rooms. The low-frequency sound insulation is known to be worse for the specimen placed at the center than for the specimen mounted at either edge of the aperture. As shown, the aperture with a tested specimen can be simulated at low frequencies as a triple partition where the middle element is the specimen and the role of the edge leaves is played by the air masses entrained at the aperture edges. With a centrally located specimen, such a triple system is symmetric and has two main natural frequencies close together. In this case, the resonant transmission is higher than for the edge arrangement simulated as a double system with one natural frequency. Analogous resonant phenomena are known to reduce the low-frequency transmission loss for symmetric triple windows or solid walls with identical air gaps and lightweight boards on both sides. The theoretical results obtained for the mechanical and acoustical models are in a good agreement with the experimental data.     

Experimental and numerical study on aeroacoustic sound of axial flow fan in room air conditioner

Fan is one of the main noise sources of the room air-conditioners. Axial flow fans are widely used in the outdoor unit of split type air-conditioners. The interaction between the fan and the heat exchanger should be taken into consideration. However, only a few researches have been carried out on predicting the aeroacoustic noise because of the difficulty in obtaining detailed information of the flow field. This paper is to understand the generation mechanism of sound and to develop a prediction method for the flow field and the acoustic pressure field of the outdoor unit. Acoustic measurement is performed in a semi-anechoic chamber. Effects of each components is analyzed. Based on commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, Fluent, Fukano’s model is used to predict the overall sound pressure level of broadband noise. The predicted sound pressure levels based on original Fukano’s model are 7.66 dB and 7.42 dB lower than measurement results at 780 rpm and 684 rpm, respectively. And the errors are about 13%. However, when wake width and relative velocity are both calculated by numerical simulations and the distance to blade trailing edge is taken into consideration, the difference of sound pressure level between measurement and prediction is less than 3.4 dB and errors less than 5.5% while the distance is less than 10 mm. Thus, the distance to blade trailing edge should also be an important parameter for Fukano’s model. In comparison with experimental results, it is clearly shown that the Fukano method based on numerical simulation can provide more accuracy than the original Fukano model and numerical results are in a reliable level.     

The impact of local resonance on the enhanced transmission and dispersion of surface resonances

We investigate the enhanced transmission through the square array of metallic coaxial annular apertures (MCAAs) in microwave frequency by varying the inner diameter of the apertures. The impact of local resonance is thoroughly embodied in the even-mode surface resonances, while the odd-mode surface resonances, invisible in measurements, are only scaled by periodicity. For MCAAs with smaller inner diameters, the transmission extrema are measured at specific incident angles matching the folded degenerate resonant states. The results are well understood in terms of the dispersion of surface resonances.     

Vibro-acoustic response and sound transmission loss analysis of functionally graded plates

This paper presents analytical studies on the vibro-acoustic and sound transmission loss characteristics of functionally graded material (FGM) plates using a simple first-order shear deformation theory. The material properties of the plate are assumed to vary according to power law distribution of the constituent materials in terms of volume fraction. The sound radiation due to sinusoidally varying point load, uniformly distributed load and obliquely incident sound wave is computed by solving the Rayleigh integral with a primitive numerical scheme. Displacement, velocity, acceleration, radiated sound power level, radiated sound pressure level and radiation efficiency of FGM plate for varying power law index are examined. The sound transmission loss of the FGM plate for several incidence angles and varying power law index is studied in detail. It has been found that, for the plate being considered, the sound power level increases monotonically with increase in power law index at lower frequency range (0–500 Hz) and a non-monotonic trend is appeared towards higher frequencies for both point and distributed force excitations. Increased vibration and acoustic response is observed for ceramic-rich FGM plate at higher frequency band; whereas a similar trend is seen for metal-rich FGM plate at lower frequency band. The dBA values are found to be decreasing with increase in power law index. The radiation efficiency of ceramic-rich FGM plate is noticed to be higher than that of metal and metal-rich FGM plates. The transmission loss below the first resonance frequency is high for ceramic-rich FGM plate and low for metal-rich FGM plate and further depends on the specific material property. The study has found that increased transmission loss can be achieved at higher frequencies with metal-rich FGM plates.     

Relation between annoyance and single-number quantities for rating heavy-weight floor impact sound insulation in wooden houses

This study investigated the relation between annoyance and single-number quantities to rate heavy-weight floor impact sound insulation. Laboratory experiments were conducted to evaluate the subjective response of annoyance resulting from heavy-weight floor impact sounds recorded in wooden houses. Stimuli had two typical spectra and their modified versions, which simulate the precise change in frequency response resulting from insulation treatments. Results of the first experiment showed that the Zwicker's percentile loudness (N(5)) was the quantity to rate most well annoyance of heavy-weight impact sound over a wide sound level range. The second experiment revealed that arithmetic average (L(iFavg,Fmax)) of octave-band sound pressure levels measured using the time constant "fast" and Zwicker's percentile loudness (N(5)) much better described annoyance by the precise change in the sound spectrum attributable to insulation treatments than Japanese standardized single-number quantities (L(i,Fmax,r), L(iA,Fmax), and L(i,Fmax,Aw)) do. Japanese standardized single-number quantities using the A-weighting curve as a rating curve were found to be excessively influenced by the 63 Hz octave-band sound level and have the great sound level-dependences in the relation with subjective ratings.     

Attenuation of flexural vibration for floating floor and floating box induced by ground vibration

This paper investigates the vibration isolation performance of floating floor and floating box structures to control rail vibration transmission. Simple theoretical and experimental methods are developed to analyze the effects of stiffener beam, mass and arrangement of isolator on the fundamental natural frequency of the flexural vibration of floating floor and box structure.The vibration reduction performances of floating floor and box structure are found to be degraded by flexural vibration of the floor or supporting stiffener beam. From the results of vibration measurements; stiffener beams increase the fundamental natural frequency of flexural vibration of floating floor and enhance vibration isolation. Also they can further alleviate the effect of flexural vibration using optimum isolator arrangement effectively. The proposed floating box design achieved a vibration reduction of 15-30 dB in frequency region of critical rail vibration (30-200 Hz).     

Experimental investigation of noise-assisted information transmission and storage via stochastic resonance

We present experimental results on the information transmission and storage via stochastic resonance in circuits designed and built around Schmitt triggers (STs). First, we investigate the performance of a transmission line comprised of five STs and show it to exhibit stochastic resonance. Each ST in the line is fed with white Gaussian noise, and the first ST is driven by a non-return-to-zero pseudo-random bit sequence with sub-threshold amplitude. Parameters such as bit error rate (Q-factor) are measured (calculated) and shown to exhibit a minimum (maximum) for an optimum amount of noise. Interestingly, we find that system performance degrades with the number of STs as if the system were linear and impaired only by additive Gaussian noise. We then propose and build a 1-bit storage device based on two STs in a loop configuration. We demonstrate that such a system is capable of storing one bit of information only in the presence of noise, and that there is a regime where the efficiency of such a device increases with increasing noise.Our results point to the feasibility of building ‘blocks’ that can transmit, store and eventually process information, whose performance is not only robust against noise, but can actually benefit from it.     

Development of an optimised, standard-compliant procedure to calculate sound transmission loss: numerical measurements

Availability of low-frequency characteristics of sound insulating elements is required in order to achieve efficient control of noise sources and reduced level of annoyance in the low-frequency range. Previous work by the author has addressed the problem of designing an enhanced calculation environment for the estimation of sound Transmission Loss (TL). In this work, numerical prediction of TL of sound insulating structures is performed using a procedure, which is in compliance with the ISO recommendations for acoustic measurements. The room-structure-room finite element representation, employed to solve sound propagation and sound-structure interaction problems, as well as the dynamic coupling of and the sound energy propagation through successive air-structure layers are investigated. Several cases of single-layered plain structures of common sound insulating materials such as steel, glass and aluminium with various thickness values are modelled and the calculated TL is compared with published experimental results. It is shown that although the detailed dynamic response of the structures is not accurately predicted due to uncertain parameters, such as the test-specimens dimension and vaguely known boundary conditions, the octave band averaged TL is sufficiently predicted for the majority of the tested materials. Extension of the method to multi-layered structures is attempted and discrepancies at low frequencies are depicted. Finally, the effect of poor mode distribution of the measurement rooms upon the estimated TL is examined in focus. Comparison is performed between TL values calculated with typical and intensely modified transmission rooms. The low-frequency improvement on measurements, when the second ones are used, is demonstrated.     

The effect of workmanship on the transmission of airborne sound through light framed walls

A study of the airborne sound transmission in a multi-tenanted building has shown that elements of the building which are nominally identical do not have the same acoustic performance. It was seen that some of this variation in performance could be attributed to visually-observable differences in the constructions. Some of the variation could not be explained however, and it was concluded that this variation was due to workmanship. The level of this variation was seen to be approximately 1 dB for a light steel framed construction. This variation is considerably less than that measured previously for a monolithic construction.     

Statistical analysis of sound transmission results obtained on the New Jersey continental shelf

Experiments have been conducted near the site of AMCOR Borehole 6010 on the New Jersey Shelf to evaluate propagation predictability in sandy shallow-water environments. The influence of a nonlinear frequency dependence of the sediment volume attenuation in the uppermost sediment layer at this location is examined. Previously it was determined that a frequency power-law exponent of 1.5 was required for the best modeling of experimental results over the band 50-1000 Hz. The approach here references the attenuation to an accepted value at 1 kHz and makes extensive comparisons between measurements and calculations, to determine a power-law exponent of 1.85+/-0.15.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of the roll motion behavior of a floating liquefied natural gas system

The present paper does an experimental and numerical investigation of the hydrodynamic interaction and the response of a single point turret-moored Floating Liquefied Natural Gas(FLNG) system,which is a new type of floating LNG(Liquid Natural Gas) platform that consists of a ship-type FPSO hull equipped with LNG storage tanks and liquefaction plants.In particular,this study focuses on the investigation of the roll response of FLNG hull in free-decay motions,white noise waves and also in irregular waves.Model tests of the FLNG system in 60%H filling condition excited by both white noise waves and irregular waves combined with steady wind and current have been carried out.Response Amplitude Operators(RAOs) and time histories of the responses are obtained for sway,roll and yaw motions.Obvious Low Frequency(LF) components of the roll motions are observed,which may be out of expectation.To facilitate the physical understanding of this phenomenon,we filter the roll motions at the period of 30 s into two parts:the Wave Frequency(WF) motions and the Low Frequency(LF) motions respectively.The results indicate that the LF motions are closely related to the sway and yaw motions.Possible reasons for the presence of the LF motions of roll have been discussed in detail,through the comparison with the sway and yaw motions.As for the numerical part,the simulation of the modeled case is conducted with the help of the software SESAM.A good agreement between experiments and calculations is reported within the scope of trends.However,the numerical simulations should be further improved for the prediction of the FLNG system in the heading sea.     

虚拟声屏障的数值及实验分析

虚拟声屏障(Virtual Sound Barrier,VSB)由若干控制声源和误差传感器构成,使用有源噪声控制方法在噪声环境中产生局部安静区域,“阻隔”声音但不“阻隔”空气和光,像一个无形的屏障对声音起作用。本文建立立体结构的VSB系统模型,从数值模拟和实验两方面说明在噪声来自于多个方向的普通房间中,通过该系统产生人头大小的静区是可行的。数值模拟表明即使在中频VSB系统也有良好的降噪效果。实验给出一种实用的圆柱状分布的16通道的VSB系统,在中低频条件下产生人头大小的静区,降噪可达10 dB以上。