A correction of random incidence absorption coefficients for the angular distribution of acoustic energy under measurement conditions

Abstract

Most acoustic measurements are based on an assumption of ideal conditions. One such ideal condition is a diffuse and reverberant field. In practice, a perfectly diffuse sound field cannot be achieved in a reverberation chamber. Uneven incident energy density under measurement conditions can cause discrepancies between the measured value and the theoretical random incidence absorption coefficient. Therefore the angular distribution of the incident acoustic energy onto an absorber sample should be taken into account. The angular distribution of the incident energy density was simulated using the beam tracing method for various room shapes and source positions. The averaged angular distribution is found to be similar to a Gaussian distribution. As a result, an angle-weighted absorption coefficient was proposed by considering the angular energy distribution to improve the agreement between the theoretical absorption coefficient and the reverberation room measurement. The angle-weighted absorption coefficient, together with the size correction, agrees satisfactorily with the measured absorption data by the reverberation chamber method. At high frequencies and for large samples, the averaged weighting corresponds well with the measurement, whereas at low frequencies and for small panels, the relatively flat distribution agrees better.