Case-study evaluations of the acoustical designs of renovated university classrooms

The acoustical characteristics of 14 university classrooms at the University of British Columbia were measured before and after renovation—seven of these are discussed in detail here. From these measurements, and theoretical considerations, values of quantities used to assess each classroom configuration were predicted, and used to evaluate renovation quality. Information on each renovation was determined with the help of the university campus-planning office and/or the project acoustical consultant. These were related to the evaluation results in order to determine the relationship between design and acoustical quality. The criteria focused on the quality of verbal communication in the classrooms. Room-average Speech Intelligibility (SI) and its physical correlate, Speech Transmission Index (STI), were used to quantify verbal-communication quality. A simplified STI-calculation procedure was applied. The results indicate that some renovations were beneficial, others were not. Verbal-communication quality varied from ‘poor’ to ‘good’. The effect of a renovation depends on a complex interplay between changes in the reverberation and changes in the signal-to-noise level difference, as affected by sound absorption and the source outputs. Renovations which reduce noise are beneficial unless signal-to-noise level differences remain optimal. Renovations often put too much emphasis on adding sound absorption to control reverberation, at the expense of lower speech levels, particularly at the backs of classrooms. The absorption and noise contributed by room occupants has apparently often been neglected.     

北京七色光儿童艺术剧院的声学设计

北京七色光儿童艺术剧院是一个以演出儿童话剧为主，同时还可以进行歌舞、音乐等其他文艺形式的演出的多功能剧场，该剧院形式活泼，音质良好。本文从音质和噪声控制的几个方面对其声学设计进行了介绍。     

Ultrasonic agitation in microchannels

This paper describes an acoustic method for inducing rotating vortex flows in microchannels. An ultrasonic crystal is used to create an acoustic standing wave field in the channel and thus induce a Rayleigh flow transverse to the laminar flow in the channel. Mixing in microchannels is strictly diffusion-limited because of the laminar flow, a transverse flow will greatly enhance mixing of the reactants. This is especially evident in chemical microsystems in which the chemical reaction is performed on a solid phase and only one reactant is actually diffusing. The method has been evaluated on two different systems, a mixing channel with two parallel flows and a porous silicon micro enzyme reactor for protein digestion. In both systems a significant increase of the mixing ratio is detected in a narrow band of frequency for the actuating ultrasound.     

Accelerating flames in tubes—an analysis

Flame acceleration in tubes is studied. A tube filled with flammable mixture is closed at one end and open to the atmosphere at its second end. When ignition takes place near the closed end, it is well-known from experiments that the flame may accelerate, oscillate and eventually reach considerable speeds. A one-dimensional analysis is presented, based upon the assumption that the flame front propagates at a speed that is small compared to the speed of sound. The analysis leads to a construction of the complete unsteady solution. Results from the analysis and from a numerical simulation are compared. They are similar enough to validate the analysis. The tube acoustics are set in motion by the expansion of the fluid due to ignition at the closed end. Subsequently, both spectrum and amplitude evolve because of the motion of the temperature interface, and because of forcing by the flame front, which the analysis precisely quantifies. Oscillations in the front position are strong enough to result in flow reversal. In addition, the induced periodic acoustic acceleration of the temperature and density interface will periodically make the flame front Rayleigh–Taylor unstable, which should result in the dramatic increase in the propagation speed seen in experiments.     

Green's function for SH-waves in a cylindrically monoclinic material

Green's function for SH-waves in a cylindrically monoclinic material is considered for impulsive and time-harmonic sources. Closed form expressions for the Green's function are derived for a few limited values of anisotropic parameters. A very interesting time development of the wave front shape is illustrated and the wave front singularity is discussed for the transient SH-wave. Contours of the displacement amplitude for the time-harmonic wave are also shown.     

Computational aeroacoustics using the B-spline collocation method

One of the major problems in computational aero-acoustics is the disparity in length scales between the flow field and the acoustic field. As a result, a mapping function is normally used to achieve a non-uniform grid distribution. In this paper, a B-spline collocation method with an arbitrary grid placement capability is proposed. This capability not only allows an optimum grid distribution but also avoids the numerical complexities associated with the mapping function. The B-spline collocation method is applied to the case of spinning co-rotating vortices. The result agrees well with the matched asymptotic solution. To cite this article: R. Widjaja et al., C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).     

Acoustic source terms study for non-isothermal flows using an aeroacoustic hybrid approach

This paper presents a numerical study of noise source term in non-isothermal flows in the context of an aeroacoustic hybrid technique at low Mach numbers. Asymptotic analysis applied to the fully compressible Navier–Stokes equations provides separated sets of equations for the dynamic of the flow and the production and propagation of acoustic waves. Comparisons with analytical dipole and quadrupole distributions are performed, confirming the dipole type of non-isothermal source distribution. This paper is a preliminary work for some more extensive studies on the topic. To cite this article: F. Golanski, C. Prax, C. R. Mecanique 333 (2005).