Sound radiation from perforated plates

Abstract

Perforated plates are quite often used as a means of engineering noise control to reduce the sound radiated by structures. However, there appears to be a lack of representative models to determine the sound radiation from a perforated plate. The aim of this thesis is to develop such a model that can be used to give quantitative guidance corresponding to the design and effectiveness of this noise control measure. Following an assessment of various models for the radiation efficiency of an unbaffled plate, Laulagnet’s model is implemented. Results are calculated and compared with those for baffled plates. From this, simple empirical formulae are developed and give a very good agreement with the analytical result. Laulagnet’s model is then modified to include the effect of perforation in terms of a continuously distributed surface impedance to represent the holes. This produces a model for the sound radiation from a perforated unbaffled plate. It is found that the radiation efficiency reduces as the perforation ratio increases or as the hole size reduces. An approximate formula for the effect of perforation is proposed which shows a good agreement with the analytical calculation up to half the critical frequency. This could be used for an engineering application to predict the noise reduction due to perforation. The calculation for guided-guided boundary conditions shows that the radiation efficiency of an unbaffled plate is not sensitive to the edge conditions. It is also shown that perforation changes the plate bending stiffness and mass and hence increases the plate vibration. The situation is also considered in which a perforated unbaffled plate is located close to a reflecting rigid surface. This is established by modifying the Green’s function in the perforated unbaffled model to include an imaginary source to represent the reflected sound. The result shows that the presence of the rigid surface reduces the radiation efficiency at low frequencies. The limitation of the assumption of a continuous acoustic impedance is investigated using a model of discrete sources. The perforated plate is discretised into elementary sources representing the plate and also the holes. It is found that the uniform surface impedance is only valid if the hole distance is less than an acoustic wavelength for a vibrating rectangular piston and less than half an acoustic wavelength for a rectangular plate in bending vibration. Otherwise, the array of holes is no longer effective to reduce the sound radiation. Experimental validation is conducted using a reciprocity technique. A good agreement is achieved between the measured results and the theoretical calculation for both the unbaffled perforated plate and the perforated plate near a rigid surface.

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ORCID for David J. Thompson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7964-5906

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