Measuring sound absorption properties of porous materials using a calibrated volume velocity source

Abstract

Measurement of acoustic properties of sound-absorbing materials has been the source of much investigation that has produced practical measuring methods. In particular, the measurement of the normal incidence sound absorption coefficient is commonly done using a well-known configuration of a tube carrying a plane wave. The sound-absorbing coefficient is calculated from the surface impedance measured on a sample of material. Therefore, a direct measurement of the impedance requires knowing the ratio between the sound pressure and the volume velocity. However, the measurement of volume velocity is not straightforward in practice and many methods have been proposed including complex transducers, laser vibrometry, accelerometers and calibrated volume velocity sources. In this paper, a device to directly measure the acoustic impedance of a sample of sound-absorbing material is presented. The device uses an internal microphone in a small cavity sealed by a loudspeaker and a second microphone mounted in front of this source. The calibration process of the device and the limitations of the method are also discussed and measurement examples are presented. The accuracy of the device was assessed by direct comparison with the standardized method. The proposed measurement method was tested successfully with various types of commercial acoustic porous materials.