On internal mean flow in porous absorbers and its effect on attenuation properties

Abstract

In vehicle applications, absorbing materials are often used to attenuate sound. In, for example, exhaust systems and on noise encapsulations, the absorber is exposed to flow. This creates a boundary layer above the absorber, which affects the impedance of the surface, and hence alters the absorption properties. In addition to this effect, the flow itself may enter the absorbent material due to high pressure and forced flow paths. An investigation of the effects that internal flow in the absorber imposes on the acoustic properties is presented. One way to describe the effect is by a change in flow resistivity. The effect is investigated for typical absorbers used in noise encapsulations for trucks. The Transfer Matrix Method is applied to calculate the resulting absorption coefficient for an absorber with changed flow resistivity due to internal flow. The possibility to model the changed properties of the absorber with internal mean flow by means of Biot theory is also explored, together with a discussion on suitable experimental methods to verify and further investigate the effects. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.