The potential of tone audiometry for the determination of the sound-absorbing properties of various materials

Abstract

The objective of the present work was to experimentally estimate the potential of the tone audiometry technique for the determination of the sound-absorbing properties of various material. The study included 15 subjects at the age from 19 to 32 years. Their audiological examination was followed by the placement of the 5×7 cm spacer plate from the study material beneath the bone vibrator telephone to determine the bone sound-conduction threshold; no air-marking was undertaken. The sound absorption by the study materials of interest was determined in each octave-band from 250 to 8000 Hz from the difference between the starting audiogram and the audiogram of the material of interest. The study was carried out in three stages: (1) evaluation of sound absorption of each of the five materials, (2) measurement of the same parameter in the combinations of 2--4 layers for increasing sound absorption, and (3) fixation of the bone conduction telephone by the operator's hand (the head-mounted harness was used for the same purpose at stages 1 and 2). The experiments demonstrated that the study of bone sound conduction by means of tone audiometry allows to estimate the sound absorption of various materials. This technique may be applied for the development of a subjective method for the measurement of sound absorption in order to evaluate the acoustic effectiveness of materials that can be used to construct individual protective anti-noise devices.