Structure-borne Sound - ACT http://www.act.elektro.dtu.

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Structure-borne Sound

Structure-borne Sound
General description

Vibration of mechanical systems and waves in solid

structures in the audible frequency rang are subjects
which form an integral part of engineering acoustics. The
study of the phenomena of such vibrations and waves are
called structure-borne sound, structural acoustics or vibro-acoustics; the three terms can be considered
equivalent and interchangeable. Thus, vibro-acoustic is the study of the mechanical waves in structures and
how they interact with and radiate into adjacent media.

Although sound waves in structures cannot be heard directly, and only be felt at low frequencies, they play
an important role in noise control. Many sound signals are generated or transmitted in structures before they
are radiated into the surrounding medium. Examples are musical sound from a string instrument, noise from
machines such as pumps in a central heating system or transport vehicles, (unwanted) sound radiation from
the cabinet of loudspeakers, or sound transmission and structure-borne noise in buildings, etc.

A fundamental knowledge of structural sound waves and their propagation is necessary for understanding

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vibro-acoustics. In many ways sound waves in structures and in fluids (gases or liquids) are similar. There
are, however, also fundamental differences, which are due to the fact that solids have shear stiffness,
whereas gases or liquids show practically none (except for viscosity effects). As a consequence acoustic
energy can be transported not only by compressional (longitudinal) waves but also by shear waves and
many combinations of compressional and shear waves. For noise control purposes, bending (or flexural or
transvers) waves are of primary importance. Bending waves are more complicated than compressional or
shear waves and depend not only on material properties but also on geometric properties. Due to this, they
are dispersive, which means that the waves travel at different speeds for its different frequency components.
When a vibrating structure is in contact with a fluid, the normal particle velocities at the interface must be
equal in the two media. This causes some of the energy from the structure to escape into the fluid; some of
it radiates away as sound in the far field and some of which stays near the structure as an evanescent near
field. Most sound radiation is caused by bending waves, which have most of its motion in the transverse
direction.

The finite element method (FEM) can be used to predict the vibration of complex structures. A finite element
computer program will assemble the mass, stiffness, and damping matrices based on geometrical and
material properties. The vibration response is then solved based on the excitations applied. The finite
element method is deterministic and mainly applicable in the low frequency range (small Helmholtz
numbers). Therefore, an exact analysis of large vibro-acoustic systems and complicated structures can be
very difficult and time-consuming. Furthermore, when solutions are sought after in the full audible frequency
range, then it will nearly always be necessary to use approximate computational methods. The excitation
often is broadband, which means that many natural modes will be excited simultaneously, and often these
modes overlap. In addition, the very modelling is complicated by the fact that boundary conditions and the
exact material properties rarely are sufficiently well known in practice. In order to remedy this problem a
strongly simplified method for predicting mean-value responses and sound radiation in connection with
complex vibro-acoustic problems has been developed. This method is called statistical energy analysis
(SEA), and has its origin in statistical room acoustic and in statistical mechanics.

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Research Focus

At ACT and at CAMM, vibro-acoustic research is conducted in the fields mentioned above. PhD project
related to vibro-acoustics are concerned with FE modeling of vocal folds and hearing aids, seismic inversion
techniques, miniature loudspeaker modeling and FE modeling of orthotropic plates. Other research activities
have been conducted on cross-coupling and source description of vibro-acoustic sources, experimental and
theoretical studies of rib-stiffened plates, and radiation and sound transmission of finite plates, to name a
few recent studies.

Contact

Jonas Brunskog
Associate Professor
DTU Electrical Engineering
+45 45 25 39 35

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Updated by Nadia Jane Larsen on 20 May 2016

Responsible editor: Finn T. Agerkvist

http://www.act.elektro.dtu.dk/Research/Research_fields/Structure-borne-Sound 10 FEBRUARY 2018

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