The effect of reverberation on the damping of bubbles

The measurement of an acoustic emission, or scatter, from a bubble is not difficult. However, an accurate interpretation of that signal in terms of the bubble dynamics may require careful consideration. The study presented here is at first sight relatively simple: comparison of the predicted and measured quality factors of injected bubbles. While the measurement is normally done by monitoring the decay of passive emissions from a bubble, this technique becomes difficult with smaller bubbles. Therefore an active technique is introduced, which removes all the frequency-dependent effects on the measurement (such as transducer response) bar one. That, critically, is the effect of the change in the bubble resonance (frequency and damping) which results from the loading on the bubble due to the reverberant field. The vast majority of theoretical treatments of bubble acoustics assume free field conditions, yet the environmental conditions rarely if ever match these. Therefore measurements of bubble damping are compared both with the established free field theory, and with a new theory relevant to the prevailing reverberant conditions (whether caused by tank surfaces, monochromatic neighboring bubbles, or both).     

Cumulant functions in optical coherence theory

Cumulant functions are introduced to describe the statistical state of a radiation field. These functions are simply related to the optical coherence functions but have some interesting features. It is shown that if the cumulant functions of all orders greater than some numberN ₀ vanish then they also vanish for all orders greater than 2. Thermal field is the only field having this property. This property holds whether the field is described by a classical stochastic process or by a quantum density operator. Further the particular operator ordering used in defining these cumulant functions for the quantized field affects only the second order cumulant function. To describe the statistical state of a vector field such as partially polarized or unpolarized radiation, one would need to introduce cumulant tensors.     

New scaling laws for hot and cold jet mixing noise based on a geometric acoustics model

New scaling laws are presented for hot turbulent jet mixing noise outside the cone of silence. These account for mean flow field effects on sound radiation via an analytical high frequency approximate solution to Lilley's equation. Numerical calculations for sound radiation from sources in a cylindrical shear flow are used to test the validity of the approximation. The proposed scaling laws yield an excellent collapse of jet noise measurements over a wide range of conditions. The resulting information has been incorporated into a jet mixing noise prediction scheme which, with appropriate modifications to the analytical high frequency approximation, can be applied both inside and outside the cone of silence. The prediction scheme for angles inside the cone of silence will be described in a subsequent paper.     

Gas phase activation energy for unimolecular dissociation of biomolecular ions determined by focused RAdiation for gaseous multiphoton ENergy transfer (FRAGMENT)

We present a novel approach for the determination of activation energy for the unimolecular dissociation of a large (>50 atoms) ion, based on measurement of the unimolecular dissociation rate constant as a function of continuous-wave CO(2) laser intensity. Following a short ( approximately 1 s) induction period, CO(2) laser irradiation produces an essentially blackbody internal energy distribution, whose 'temperature' varies inversely with laser intensity. The only currently available method for measuring such activation energies is blackbody infrared radiative dissociation (BIRD). Compared with BIRD, FRAGMENT: (a) eliminates the need to heat the surrounding ion trap and vacuum chamber to each of several temperatures (each requiring hours for temperature equilibration); (b) offers a three-fold wider range of effective blackbody temperature; and (c) extends the range of applications to include initially cold ions (e.g., gas-phase H/D exchange). Our FRAGMENT-determined activation energy for dissociation of protonated bradykinin, 1.2 +/- 0.1 eV, agrees within experimental error to the value, 1.3 +/- 0.1 eV, previously reported by Williams et al. from BIRD experiments. Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multi-mode sound transmission in ducts with flow

Exhaust mufflers, large exhaust stacks, and turbofan engines are common examples of ducted noise. The most useful measure of the sound produced by these noise sources is the sound power transmitted along the duct. When airflow is present, sound power flow can no longer be uniquely determined from the usual measurements of acoustic pressure and particle velocity.One approach to sound power determination from in-duct pressure measurement, and the one discussed in this paper, is to predict the relationship between the sound power and pressure based upon an assumed mode amplitude distribution. This paper investigates the relationship between acoustic pressure and power for a family of idealized source distributions of arbitrary temporal and spatial order. Incoherent monopole and dipole sources uniformly distributed over a duct cross-section can be obtained as special cases. This paper covers the sensitivity of the pressure-power relationship to source multipole order, frequency and, in particular, flow speed. It is shown that the introduction of flow in a hard-walled duct can have a substantial effect on the behavior of the pressure-power relationship for certain source distributions. Preliminary experimental results in a no-flow facility are presented in order to verify some of the main results.     

Aerodynamic sound production in low speed flow ducts

Measurements of spoiler aerodynamic noise, generated in a low velocity flow duct and radiated from an open exhaust termination, have been made in the form of sound power spectra. The individual $\text{1}\text{3}$ octave power measurements are satisfactorily collapsed (within ± 3 dB) with the aid of derived theoretical scaling laws. Non-dimensional spectra are presented which permit generalized predictions of flow noise for bluff bodies, including splitter attenuators, mounted in low speed flow ducts.     

Acoustic energy in non-uniform flows

The concept of acoustic energy is extended to non-uniform fluid flows. In general, the resulting energy balance equation exhibits acoustic energy production or dissipation within the flow, but in an important special case the production term is zero, implying conservation of acoustic energy. The acoustic energy equations used in classical and geometric acoustics are recovered from the general formulation by making the appropriate assumptions.