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A method of measuring acoustic absorption coefficient of a material specimen using a dynamic microphone

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Abstract

This paper reports the development of a method for measuring the absorption coefficient of a material specimen mounted at one end of a planar wave tube using a dynamic microphone at the other end. In the proposed method, the dynamic microphone mounted is used as an actuator (loudspeaker) to generate sound waves and simultaneously performs as a probe to sense acoustic impedance at the same point. For the electro-mechanical acoustical system formed by the dynamic microphone and the tube, a “transduction matrix” is introduced to relate the input electrical variables (voltage and current) and the output acoustical variables (pressure and particle velocity). Once the matrix is calibrated, probing the input voltage and current to the dynamic microphone alone allows quantitative evaluation of the acoustic impedance of material specimen, from which absorption coefficient of the material is calculated. Measurements of fully-reflected end, anechoic end and a porous material specimen are carried out and compared to the results obtained by the conventional transfer function method. It is found that the results match well with each other in a frequency range depending on the length of the tube.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Jin Xie & Shih-Fu Ling

Authors
  1. Jin Xie
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  2. Shih-Fu Ling
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shih-Fu Ling.

Additional information

This paper was recommended for publication in revised form by Editor Yeon June Kang

Jin Xie received his B.Eng. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2000, the M.Eng. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2003, and his Ph.D degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2008. From 2007 to 2011, he worked in Institute of Microelectronics, Singapore, where he was a scientist in the Sensors and Actuators Microsystems Program. In June 2011, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA, as a post-doc researcher. His research interests include microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS) design and processes, energy harvesters, inertial sensors, acoustics and vibration measurement.

Shih-Fu Ling was trained in vibration and noise engineering in earlier years. He had around 10-year industrial experience in car system design and car manufacturing management. In recent years, his research is more focused in new method, sensors, and actuators for dynamic measurement. He has tried hard to look for a general model to describe transduction function in transducers.

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Xie, J., Ling, SF. A method of measuring acoustic absorption coefficient of a material specimen using a dynamic microphone. J Mech Sci Technol 26, 741–748 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-011-1235-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-011-1235-9

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