Increased modal damping of undamped single and multiscale acoustic black hole panels.

The acoustic black hole (ABH) effect has been shown to increase damping of structures by focusing energy into a tapered-thickness region with added damping material. This paper illustrates that enhanced damping can be achieved without the use of damping material. Three panels were designed with different ABH grid patterns and parameters and compared to a baseline panel. Increased damping is shown to exist for two of the three ABH panels even though no damping material was applied. The panel modes which exhibited increased damping were local to the ABH grid while global modes did not exhibit increased damping.

A simple model for the spatial correlation of turbulence-induced pressures.

The Reflections series takes a look back on historical articles from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America that have had a significant impact on the science and practice of acoustics.

Directional characteristics of two gamelan gongs.

The distinctive geometry and structural characteristics of Balinese gamelan gongs lead to the instrument's unique sound and musical style. This work presents high-resolution directivity measurements of two types of gamelan gongs to quantify and better understand their acoustic behavior. The measured instruments' structural modes clearly impact their far-field directivity patterns, with the number of directional lobes corresponding to the associated structural mode shapes. Many of the lowest modes produce dipole-like radiation, with the dipole moment determined by the positions of the nodal and antinodal regions. Higher modes exhibit more complex patterns with multiple lobes often correlated with the location and number of antinodal regions on the gong's edge. Directivity indices correspond to dipole radiation at low frequencies and quadrupole radiation at intermediate and higher frequencies. Symmetry analysis confirms that the gong's rim significantly impacts the resultant directivity.

Optimization of an acoustic black hole vibration absorber at the end of a cantilever beam.

Structures whose thickness follow a power law profile exhibit the "acoustic black hole" (ABH) effect and can be used for effective vibration reduction. However, it is difficult to know a priori what constitutes the best design. A new block matrix formulation of the transfer matrix method is developed for use in the optimization of an ABH vibration absorber at the end of a cantilever beam. Results indicate that introduction of the ABH significantly alters the dynamics of the beam, which must be considered in determining the optimal design for a given vibration reduction problem.

Transient finite element/equivalent sources using direct coupling and treating the acoustic coupling matrix as sparse.

Transient structural-acoustic problems can be solved using time stepping procedures with the structure and fluid modeled using finite elements and equivalent sources, respectively. Limitations on the time step size for stable solutions have led to the current popularity of iterative coupling to enforce the boundary conditions at the fluid-structure interface, which also helps to alleviate difficulties caused by the fully populated acoustic coupling matrix. The research presented here examines a monolithic approach using a stabilized equivalent source formulation where the acoustic coupling matrix is either fully diagonal or treated as sparse. In theory, the matrix should be sparse because it relates nodal velocities to nodal acoustic pressure forces during a single time step, and the pressure waves can only travel a distance equal to the sound speed multiplied by the time step. The numerical results demonstrate that for the chosen example problems accurate results are obtained for either diagonal coupling matrices or with a large percentage of the terms set to zero. It is also demonstrated that the formulation adapts well to parallel processing environments and that the times associated with the equivalent source computations are proportional to the number of processors.

Quieting a rib-framed honeycomb core sandwich panel for a rotorcraft roof.

A rotorcraft roof composite sandwich panel has been redesigned to optimize sound power transmission loss (TL) and minimize structure-borne sound for frequencies between 1 and 4 kHz where gear meshing noise from the transmission has the most impact on speech intelligibility. The roof section, framed by a grid of ribs, was originally constructed of a single honeycomb core/composite facesheet sandwich panel. The original panel has acoustic coincidence frequencies near 600 Hz, leading to poor TL across the frequency range of 1 to 4 kHz. To quiet the panel, the cross section was split into two thinner sandwich subpanels separated by an air gap. The air gap was sized to target the fundamental mass-spring-mass resonance of the panel system to less than 500 Hz, well below the frequency range of interest. The panels were designed to withstand structural loading from normal rotorcraft operation, as well as 'man-on-the-roof' static loads experienced during maintenance operations. Thin layers of viscoelastomer were included in the facesheet ply layups, increasing panel damping loss factors from about 0.01 to 0.05. Transmission loss measurements show the optimized panel provides 6-11 dB of acoustic transmission loss improvement, and 6-15 dB of structure-borne sound reduction at critical rotorcraft transmission tonal frequencies. Analytic panel TL theory simulates the measured performance within 3 dB over most frequencies. Detailed finite element (FE)/boundary element (BE) modeling simulates TL slightly more accurately, within 2 dB for frequencies up to 4 kHz, and also simulates structure-borne sound well, generally within 3 dB.

Multi-objective optimization of acoustic black hole vibration absorbers.

Structures with power law tapers exhibit the acoustic black hole (ABH) effect and can be used for vibration reduction. However, the design of ABHs for vibration reduction requires consideration of the underlying theory and its regions of validity. To address the competing nature of the best ABH design for vibration reduction and the underlying theoretical assumptions, a multi-objective approach is used to find the lowest frequency where both criteria are sufficiently met. The Pareto optimality curve is estimated for a range of ABH design parameters. The optimal set could then be used to implement an ABH vibration absorber.

A hybrid approach for simulating fluid loading effects on structures using experimental modal analysis and the boundary element method.

Many structural acoustics problems involve a vibrating structure in a heavy fluid. However, obtaining fluid-loaded natural frequencies and damping experimentally can be difficult and expensive. This paper presents a hybrid experimental-numerical approach to determine the heavy-fluid-loaded resonance frequencies and damping of a structure from in-air measurements. The approach combines in-air experimentally obtained mode shapes with simulated in-water acoustic resistance and reactance matrices computed using boundary element (BE) analysis. The procedure relies on accurate estimates of the mass-normalized, in vacuo mode shapes using singular value decomposition and rational fraction polynomial fitting, which are then used as basis modes for the in-water BE analysis. The method is validated on a 4.445 cm (1.75 in.) thick nickel-aluminum-bronze rectangular plate by comparing natural frequencies and damping obtained using the hybrid approach to equivalent data obtained from actual in-water measurements. Good agreement is shown for the fluid-loaded natural frequencies and one-third octave loss factors. Finally, the limitations of the hybrid approach are examined.

Experimental evidence of modal wavenumber relation to zeros in the wavenumber spectrum of a simply supported plate.

The modal wavenumber of rectangular, simply supported, isotropic thin plates was theoretically shown to be related to the zeros in the wavenumber spectrum and not to the peaks, resulting in an error between the actual modal wavenumber and location of the wavenumber spectrum peak for low mode orders. This theoretical proof is confirmed by experimental results reported in this letter.

Minimizing the acoustic power radiated by a fluid-loaded curved panel excited by turbulent boundary layer flow.

In order to address noise control problems in the design stage, structural-acoustic optimization procedures can be used to find the optimal design for reduced noise or vibration. However, most structural-acoustic optimization procedures are not general enough to include both heavy fluid loading and complex forcing functions. Additionally, it can be difficult to determine and assess trade-offs between weight and sound radiation. A structural-acoustic optimization approach is presented for minimizing the radiated power of structures with heavy fluid loading excited by complex forcing functions. The procedure is demonstrated on a curved underwater panel excited by a point drive and by turbulent boundary layer flow. To facilitate more efficient analysis, an uncorrelated pressure assumption is made for the turbulent boundary layer forcing function. The thicknesses of groups of elements were used as the design variables with an adaptive covariance matrix evolutionary strategy as the search algorithm. The objective function was a weighted sum of total sound power and panel mass and the Pareto front was computed to show the optimum trade-off between the two objectives. The optimal designs are presented which illustrate the best methods for reducing radiated sound and mass simultaneously.

The effects of wood variability on the free vibration of an acoustic guitar top plate.

A finite element model of a bare top plate with braces and a bridge plate was created using orthotropic material properties. The natural variation of the wood properties including dependence on moisture content was also determined. The simulated modes were then compared to experimentally obtained modes from top plate prototypes. Uncertainty analysis was also performed to determine the statistical bound of natural variability between wood samples. The natural frequencies of the model fall within the computed error bound. These results reinforce the importance of obtaining accurate material properties for acoustic guitar modeling.

Comment on plate modal wavenumber transforms in Sound and structural vibration [Academic Press (1987, 2007)] (L).

The wavenumber transform for rectangular, simply supported, isotropic thin plates has been rederived to correct a technical error found in the text Sound and Structural Vibration (Academic Press, 1985/2007) by Fahy/Fahy and Gardonio. The text states that the modal wavenumber corresponds to the peak of the wavenumber spectrum. While this is approximately true for higher-order modes, it does not hold for lower-order modes due to coupling between positive and negative wavenumber energy. The modal wavenumber is shown to be related to the zeros in the wavenumber spectrum by an integer multiple of 2π normalized by the plate length.

Evolution of statistical properties for a nonlinearly propagating sinusoid.

The nonlinear propagation of a pure sinusoid is considered using time domain statistics. The probability density function, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, and crest factor are computed for both the amplitude and amplitude time derivatives as a function of distance. The amplitude statistics vary only in the postshock realm, while the amplitude derivative statistics vary rapidly in the preshock realm. The statistical analysis also suggests that the sawtooth onset distance can be considered to be earlier than previously realized.

Bicoherence analysis of model-scale jet noise.

Bicoherence analysis has been used to characterize nonlinear effects in the propagation of noise from a model-scale, Mach-2.0, unheated jet. Nonlinear propagation effects are predominantly limited to regions near the peak directivity angle for this jet source and propagation range. The analysis also examines the practice of identifying nonlinear propagation by comparing spectra measured at two different distances and assuming far-field, linear propagation between them. This spectral comparison method can lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the role of nonlinearity when the observations are made in the geometric near field of an extended, directional radiator, such as a jet.

Short-range shock formation and coalescence in numerical simulation of broadband noise propagation.

The number of jet and rocket noise studies has increased in recent years as researchers have sought to better understand aeroacoustic source and radiation characteristics. Although jet and rocket noise is finite-amplitude in nature, little is known about the existence of shock formation and coalescence close to the source. A numerical experiment is performed to propagate finite-amplitude noise and determine the extent of the nonlinearity over short distances with spherical spreading. The noise is filtered to have a haystack shape in the frequency domain, as is typical of such sources. The effect of the nonlinearity is compared in both the temporal and frequency domains as a function of distance. Additionally, the number of zero-crossings and overall sound pressure level is compared at several distances. The results indicate that the center frequency plays a particularly important role in the amount of coalescence and spectral redistribution that occurs. The general applicability of these results to actual near-field finite-amplitude jet and rocket noise experiments is also presented.