Investigation of damping and radiation using full plane wave decomposition in ducts

Abstract

A general plane wave decomposition procedure that determines both the wave amplitudes (or the reflection coefficient) and the wavenumbers is proposed for in-duct measurements. To improve the quality of the procedure, overdetermination and a nonlinear least-squares procedure is used. The procedure has been tested using a six microphone array, and used for accurate measurements of the radiation from an open unflanged pipe with flow. The experimental results for the reflection coefficient magnitude and the end correction have been compared with the theory of Munt. The agreement is very good if the maximum speed rather than the average is used to compare measurements and theory. This result is the first complete experimental validation of the theory of Munt [Acoustic transmission properties of a jet pipe with subsonic jet flow, I: the cold jet reflection coefficient, Journal of Sound and Vibration 142(3) (1990) 413–436]. The damping of the plane wave (the imaginary part of the wavenumber) could also be obtained from the experimental data. It is found that the damping increases strongly, compared with the damping for a quiescent fluid, when the acoustic boundary layer becomes thicker than the viscous sublayer. This finding is in agreement with a few earlier measurements and is also in agreement with a theoretical model proposed by Howe [The damping of sound by wall turbulent sheer layers, Journal of Acoustic Society of America 98(3) (1995) 1723–1730]. The results reported here are the first experimental verifications of Howe's model. It is found that the model works well typically up to a normalized acoustic boundary layer thickness δ A + of 30–40. For values of a δ A + less than 10, corresponding to higher frequencies or lower flow speeds, the model proposed by Dokumaci [A note on transmission of sound in a wide pipe with mean flow and viscothermal attenuation, Journal of Sound and Vibration 208(4) (1997) 653–655] is also in good agreement with the experimental data.