Absorption of Sound PDF

KTH Engineering Sciences
Absorption of sound
- on the effects of field interaction on
absorber performance
Anna Färm
Doctoral Thesis
Stockholm, Sweden
2016
Academic thesis with permission by KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, to be submitted for public examination for the degree of
Doctorate in Vehicle and Maritime Engineering, Friday the 8th of April,
2016 at 09.00, in F3, Lindstedtsvägen 26, KTH - Royal Institute of Tech-
nology, Stockholm, Sweden.
TRITA-AVE 2016:09
ISSN 1651-7660
ISBN 978-91-7595-883-5

c Anna Färm, 2016
Postal address: Visiting address: Contact:

KTH, AVE Teknikringen 8 afarm@kth.se
Centre for ECO2 Vehicle Design Stockholm anna.farm@scania.com
SE-100 44 Stockholm
ii
Abstract
Environmental noise has for decades been a well known problem, es-
pecially in urban areas and vehicle industry, among others, has been
designing their vehicles to reduce noise levels. As noise requirements
are sharpened and many measures have already been implemented,
more knowledge is needed for further sound reduction. Development
processes relying on measurements are neither sufficient nor possible
due to shorter lead time in the development process in many indus-
tries. Noise reducing concepts are needed in early design stages when
no physical prototypes are available and simulations are then needed
to support the design. An iterative and efficient design process requires
fast and accurate simulations. Specifically for optimization of noise treat-
ments, the performance of the absorbers must be simulated correctly.
In order to reduce noise from heavy vehicles, so called noise encap-

sulations are placed below the powertrain to create a more closed en-
gine bay and prevent noise radiation. The inside of these shields are
covered by sound absorbing materials and the attenuation from these
must be correctly represented in simulations. In the engine bay, a com-
plex sound field, cooling flow from the fan and high temperature vari-
ations are present and they may all affect the performance of the ab-
sorber.
The research performed within this thesis studies the impact of these
factors on the absorber performance and how to properly include this in
simulations. Existing models have been used in the study and a method
to include the effect of flow and temperature variations has been de-
veloped. Experimental methods for characterization of input data to
simulations have also been investigated and a method to improve the
accuracy of one of these has been proposed.
It is shown that the material representation significantly affects the

attenuation performance in the simulations. A common representation
of absorbing materials in simulations is the normal surface impedance.
This is a simplification neglecting the extended reaction in the material,
i.e. omitting the full interaction between the sound field outside and in-
side the material. This was shown to affect the noise reduction consider-
ably. Fully resolving the material in simulations or to assign an angular
dependent surface impedance obtains more accurate simulation results.
iii
The conclusion from this is that the interaction between the field and the
absorber must be included in the absorber representation. This implies
that the performance varies with the sound field which was also shown
from measurements in different sound fields.
A measurement method in free field, to determine the angular de-

pendent surface impedance was evaluated. The method was shown
sensitive to small samples and a method to improve the measured data
was suggested within this thesis. When the angular dependence is in-
cluded, either by full resolution of the material or an angular dependent
impedance, the field-absorber interaction effects are included in the sim-
ulations.
The influence of flow and temperature fields on the absorber per-

formance was also investigated. A method to include these effects in
an efficient surface impedance was developed within this thesis. The
impact on the attenuation performance was evaluated and showed sig-
nificant effect. The impacts are seen to be larger for materials with ex-
tended reaction than for locally reacting materials.
In conclusion, thorough knowledge of the material behavior and the

field in the applications is required to choose appropriate material rep-
resentation to enable reliable simulation results.
Keywords: Sound absorption, Porous absorbers, Bulk reaction, Local

reaction, Boundary layer, Grazing flow, Temperature gradients, Surface
impedance, Sound field, Pass-by noise
iv
Sammanfattning
Samhällsbuller har under en längre tid varit ett välkänt problem speci-
ellt i storstäder och bland annat fordonstillverkare har länge arbetat med
att reducera ljudnivåer från sina fordon. I takt med att ljudkraven skärps
och enkla bulleråtgärderna redan är utförda behövs mer kunskap för att
ytterligare sänka ljudnivåerna. Utvecklingsmetoder som förlitar sig på
mätningar är inte längre tillräckliga och heller inte möjliga pga förkort-
ade utvecklingsprocesser hos många tillverkare. Ljudåtgärder behöver
föreslås i tidigt designstadium då inga fysiska prototyper finns att tillgå
och simuleringar av externbuller är då ett kraftfullt verktyg. För att möj-
liggöra en iterativ designprocess och att säkerställa bra lösningar krävs
noggranna och effektiva simuleringar. För att kunna optimera ljudre-
ducerande åtgärder behöver absorbenternas prestanda därmed kunna
simuleras korrekt.
För tunga fordon används ofta så kallade bullerkapslingar under

drivlinan för att erhålla ett mer stängt motorrum och därmed skärma
avstrålat ljud. Insidan av dessa är klädda med absorberande mater-
ial, vilkas ljudreducerande förmåga behöver simuleras korrekt. I detta
utrymme finns ett komplext ljudfält, strömning från kylfläkten samt
stora temperaturvariationer vilka alla påverkar absorbenternas prest-
anda.
Forskningen i denna avhandling har analyserat dessa faktorers in-

verkan på ljudreduktionen från en absorbent, samt hur detta ska inkluderas
i simuleringar. Befintliga modeller har använts i studierna och en ny
metod för att inkludera strömning och temperaturvariationer har tagits
fram. Mätmetoder för att karaktärisera materialen till simuleringarna
har också analyserats och en metod för att förbättra mätresultaten har
föreslagits.
Det visar sig att representationen av materialet inverkar kraftigt på

erhållen ljudreduktion i simuleringarna. En vanlig förenkling i sim-
uleringar är att representera absorbenter med dess ytimpedans. Denna
förenkling bortser från utbredd reaktion i materialet, och därmed in-
verkan av ljudfältet, vilket visat sig ha stor betydelse för ljudreduk-
tionen. Att modellera hela materialet alternativt att sätta ytimpedansen
för specifika infallsvinklar som randvillkor istället ger resultat närmare
verkligheten. Det viktigaste resultatet av dessa studier är att fältets sam-
v
verkan med absorbenten måste inkluderas i representationen för mater-
ialet. Detta innebär att absorbenten presterar olika beroende på ljudfäl-
tet.
En mätmetod för bestämning av ytimpedansen för olika infallsvink-

lar har studerats. Metoden visade sig vara känslig för små material-
sampel, och en metod för att reducera inverkan av detta framarbet-
ades i denna avhandling. Inkluderar man vinkelberoendet, antingen
via tidskrävande upplösning av absorbent och yttre fält, eller via det
enklare vinkelberoende randvillkoret kan man inkludera de viktigaste
effekterna i simuleringarna.
Även inverkan av strömnings- och temperaturfält på absorbentprest-

andan studerades. En metod för att inkludera dessa effekter i en effektiv
ytimpedans utvecklades i denna avhandling. Inverkan av dessa effek-
ter utvärderades med hjälp av denna metod och visade sig vara bety-
dande. Material med utbredd reaktion, dvs vinkelberoende ytimped-
ans, påverkades mer än lokalreagerande material av strömnings- och
temperaturfälten.
Sammanfattningsvis krävs mycket god kunskap om fälten och ab-

sorbenten i applikationen för att välja rätt representation så att korrekta
simuleringar ska kunna genomföras.
Nyckelord: Ljudabsorption, ljudabsorbent, bulkreagerande, lokalreager-

ande, gränsskikt, strykande strömning, temperaturgradienter, ytimped-
ans, ljudfält, Förbifarts-buller
vi
Acknowledgements
At last, I am standing here at the finish line with a PhD thesis in my
hand as a proof of what I have accomplished the last five years of my
life. This would not have been possible without the supervision and
guidance from my PhD advisors Ragnar Glav and Susann Boij to whom
I would like to send my sincerest gratitude. I would also like to thank
my main supervisor Mats Åbom for providing valuable suggestions for
my work and specifying the research direction in the beginning of the
project. I would also like to thank Dr. Olivier Dazel for supervising me
during my studies in Le Mans, France.
I would also like to acknowledge Scania CV AB and the Centre for ECO2
Vehicle Design for financial support and for bringing my project in to a
larger context.
The experimental part of thesis would not have been possible without
the help of Danilo who built setups and modified the measurement rigs
in order for me to further improve my results. Also, many thanks to my
fellow PhD student Luck for being a rock in the laboratory, sharing your
time and experience.
To all my fellow PhD students and colleagues, all the lunch discussions
and laughter at fika-breaks with you have made many tough periods
easier to handle.
This passed five years of my life has taught me a lot. And not only
about acoustics and research. More about human behavior and, espe-
cially, about myself! I have learnt the true meaning of struggle and how
my mind works in time of seemingly overwhelming obstacles. This has
taught me to believe in myself and also not to always listen to and trust
the criticizing evil twin hanging over my shoulder.
I have through banging my head against the wall realized that I some-
times need to trust other people with my weaknesses and fears, and feel
the the comfort, warmth and reassurance this can bring. This has helped
me to bring down some walls around myself, letting people have bigger
parts in my life, which finally has made me a more happy person.
Finally I would like to send all my love to my mum and dad for always
being there for me, unconditionally. And to my brother, supporting me
vii
in his brotherly ways. To my friends and the rest of my family; you make
me feel cherished and loved!
Last but not least, to my Johan:
Tack för att du tar ner mig på jorden när jag tror att världen kommer
falla samman... Jag älskar dig
Anna Färm
Stockholm, 10th March 2016
viii
Dissertation
This thesis consists of two parts: The first part gives an overview of
the research area and work performed. The second part contains the
following research papers (A-E):
Paper A
A. Färm, S. Boij and R. Glav, On Sound Absorbing Characteristics and suit-
able Measurement methods, Proceedings of the 7th International Styrian
Noise, Vibration and Harshness Congress, Graz, Austria (2012).
Paper B
A. Färm, S. Boij, P. Göransson, and R. Glav, On internal mean flow in por-
ous absorbers and its effect on attenuation properties, Proceedings of the 21st
International Congress on Acoustics, Montréal, Canada (2013).
Paper C
A. Färm, S. Boij , R. Glav and O. Dazel Absorption of sound at a surface
exposed to flow and temperature gradients, Provisionally accepted for pub-
lication, Applied Acoustics.
Paper D
A. Färm, R. Glav and S. Boij Edge scattering impact in free field estimation
of surface impedance, Submitted for publication, Applied Acoustics.
Paper E
A. Färm, R. Glav and S. Boij Pass-by noise simulations - influence of trim
representation, To be submitted.
Division of work between authors

A. Färm initiated the direction of and performed the studies, performed
the measurements, made the analysis, the coding and produced the pa-
pers. S. Boij and R. Glav supervised the work, discussed ideas and re-
viewed the work. During a few months, O. Dazel supervised the work.
ix
Publications not included in this thesis
A. Färm, R. Glav R. and S. Boij, On variation of absorption factor due to
measurement method and correction factors for conversion between methods,
Proceedings of the Inter-Noise Conference, New York, USA (2012).
A. Färm, S. Boij, The Effect of Boundary Layers on Bulk Reacting Liners at

Low Mach Number Flows, Proceedings of the 19th AIAA/CEAS Aeroacous-
tics Conference, Berlin, Germany (2013).
A. Färm, S. Boij and O. Dazel Prediction of acoustic surface impedance

of bulk reacting lining with grazing flow, Proceedings of the 21th Interna-
tional Congress on Sound and Vibration, Beijing, China (2014).
A. Färm, S. Boij and R. Glav The influence of finite sample size on surface
impedance determination of materials with low sound absorption at low fre-
quencies, Proceedings of the Euronoise Conference, Maastricht, the Neth-
erlands (2015).
x
Contents
I OVERVIEW 1
1 Introduction 3
1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 Noise encapsulations - multifunctional conflicts . . 5
1.2 Acoustic simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Aim and objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Material characterization 11
2.1 Absorption properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1.1 Free field methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Material properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3 Acoustic simulations 23
3.1 Material representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.1.1 Flow and temperature fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.2 Pass-by noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4 Summary and conclusions 33

4.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5 Summary of appended papers 37
Bibliography 40
II APPENDED PAPERS A-E 47

Part I
OVERVIEW
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
In urban environments sound is an inevitable part of the atmosphere.
Some sounds in specific situations may be pleasant; For example, po-
lice sirens and constant buzzing from the crowd is an attractive audible
backdrop of a city like New York, even though the noise levels are high.
In other situations, the silent ticking of a clock is more disturbing than a
motorcycle accelerating passed you walking on the sidewalk. Irrespect-
ive of the subjective feeling of the sound, it has been shown that con-
3
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
tinuous noise exposure have negative health effects 1 . It has been shown
to increase risk of cardiovascular diseases, and a scheme of the health
effects of noise are shown in Figure 1.1 2 .
Figure 1.1: Scheme of noise effect reaction (Source: Babisch 2002 2 ).
Because of the known health problems, urbanisation and the increase

in public awareness of noise, demand on less noisy or silent products has
grown. Many products may have a market advantage if their product
is silent and in addition many products, like for example vehicles, must
fulfill noise requirements to be allowed on the market.
Noise requirements on vehicles are set both for the interior and ex-
terior. The external noise requirements limits the noise levels for the
vehicle passing by for certain driving conditions, the so called pass-by
noise level, PBN 3 . The limits are continuously being sharpened 4 and
new requirements for trucks, developed for quiet night time deliveries,
has pushed the limits even further 5 .
Unlike the serial production of nearly identical vehicles in car in-
dustry, heavy vehicles like trucks are often custom made for each cos-
4
1.1. BACKGROUND
tumer. At Scania, for example, the vehicles are built from a modu-
lar toolbox where many parts can be chosen individually, and the final
vehicle should be ensured to fulfill all functional requirements, such as,
e.g. the external noise level. This is a challenge as customized noise re-
ducing solutions on a specific individual vehicle or item in the vehicle
assembly is not effective. An efficient measure is then to use shields to
reduce external noise radiation, so called noise encapsulations.
Classically, noise reducing concepts are developed from previous
designs, evaluating the performance through full vehicle measurements.
However, in order to optimize noise measures, simulations enabling vir-
tual prototypes are more powerful. In addition, several functions may
be optimized simultaneously when performing simulations, not only
the noise 6 .
1.1.1 Noise encapsulations - multifunctional conflicts

The noise encapsulations are constructed of a carrier, normally plastic,
with high transmission loss and the inside of the encapsulations are
partly covered with absorbing materials. They are normally mounted
on the frame, underneath and beside the powertrain, as seen in Figure
1.2.
Figure 1.2: Noise encapsulation (blue) placed below the drive train on a truck, mounted
on the frame (grey), to shield and attenuate radiated noise.
Originally, the sole purpose of the encapsulation was to fulfill the

noise requirements, although today, it is also used for thermal purposes
and to protect against dirt. The encapsulations are not entirely enclosing
the powertrain for many reasons, such as the need of heat evacuation
and outlet for cooling flow.
Basically, there are three important properties of the encapsulations
affecting the obtained noise attenuation; The transmission loss of the
carrier, the attenuation performance of the trim materials, and most im-
5
portant, the enclosure ratio. Would the ratio be only one fourth, the qual-
ity of the absorbers and the carrier would not largely affect the radiated
noise levels since large parts of the sound waves are emitted without
interacting with the shields.
The environment inside the engine bay is quite diverse, depend-
ing on operational mode of the engine, among which large temperature
variations, airflow and a complex sound field are particularly interest-
ing from an acoustic perspective. A sketch of a generic engine bay of a
truck is shown in Figure 1.3. The sound reducing performance of the ab-
sorbing materials placed in this environment are affected by these para-
meters defining the acoustic state, and it is important to analyze to what
extent the attenuation is affected and in what way. It is also of interest
to investigate how to incorporate these effects in virtual prototypes for
noise simulations.
Figure 1.3: Generic sketch of the engine bay of a truck; A semi-enclosed space with com-
plex sound, flow and temperature fields and absorbing walls. The change in performance
of the absorbers in this environment compared to room temperature, normally incident
sound waves and stand still air is to be studied.
When noise reducing materials are properly represented in simula-

tions, the prediction of the attenuation is correctly predicted. This is
an important step in enabling optimization of the measures from sim-
ulations. At this stage, a multifunctional design of the encapsulations
may be developed. The shields may for example be designed to reduce
vehicle drag, protect against dirt and guide cooling flow through the
engine bay. The position of the absorbing material may for example be
6
1.2. ACOUSTIC SIMULATIONS
optimized for maximum sound attenuation and cooling flow. This leads
to a product that serves several purposes to a lower product cost and re-
duced weight. This has advantages both economically and ecologically;
a so called ECO2 -design 7 !
The simulation-driven product development enables new solutions
early in the design process, increasing knowledge at this stage, which
is favorable both for cost and the possibility to change concepts, this is
shown schematically in Figure 1.4. The so called design paradox visual-
izes the contradiction in the design process, where the possibility to in-
troduce changes in the design is low and costly at the stage when proper
knowledge of the product exists. The opposite applies in early stages;
large changes are possible at low cost, even though the knowledge at
this point may not be enough. Using virtual prototypes increases the
knowledge in early stages, enabling solutions that are more effective.
Figure 1.4: The design Paradox relating product knowledge, freedom of action and modi-
fication costs at two time scenarios: 1 early stage and 2 today (graph reconstructed from
Figure 37.2 in Lindahl 8 ).
1.2 Acoustic simulations

Simulations of external noise are needed to enable evaluations of noise
reducing concepts in an early design stage when physical prototypes
for measurements are not available. In setting up the virtual prototypes
for simulations there are several factors to consider concerning what is
7
possible to include and what is necessary to include. There are two ex-
tremes; Designing the simulations solely from the basis of what is pos-
sible (both due to input data and simulation software) and to design
simulations including all details that can be though of. The best solu-
tion is naturally in between the extremes, as a compromise of feasibility
and usefulness. In order to make this compromise, knowledge of the
impact of different parameters on the final results must be acquired.
Some aspects that needs to be considered when designing acoustic

simulations are:
• Precision of the geometrical model of the vehicle:
Detailed CAD-models of all parts of the vehicle are normally avail-
able.
• Structural motion:
All parts has structural properties and the motion may be included,
also vibro-acoustic coupling between flexible bodies and the air.
• Source data:
Input, such as vibrations of surfaces or as monopole sources from
simulations, or measured pressure levels or impedances may be
available.
• External fields:
Variations in flow, temperature, humidity and particles in the com-
putational domain. This is studied in paper A 9 and C 10 .
• Sound absorbing materials:
The representation of the material in the simulations, either resolv-
ing the propagation in the material with a material model or rep-
resenting it by an impedance. This is studied in papers A-E 9–13 .
The importance of some of these factors are known, like the first two as-
pects. Dimensions significantly smaller than the wavelength normally
have negligible impact on the sound propagation. Also, when consider-
ing simulations in open spaces, the coupling between air and structure
is small and the contribution to the radiated noise due to this is possible
to omit in comparison to the direct, reflected and diffracted noise from
the main sources. The latter conclusion changes if the analysis is to be
made inside an enclosure, such as the cabin interior.
The source modeling is obviously an important part of making ac-
curate simulations of external noise levels from the vehicle. In this field,
8
1.2. ACOUSTIC SIMULATIONS
several measurement techniques and simulation software exist to char-

acterize the different noise sources on vehicles 14–16 . The question of de-
tail in representation of them in simulations is case dependent.
External fields certainly affect the sound propagation; Flow and tem-
perature variations refract sound waves and alter the speed of sound
and particles or dirt may clog the absorptive material. In particular,
large gradients in the fields refract sound waves and this mostly occurs
close to surfaces. In the aircraft industry, flow boundary layers at imped-
ance surfaces have shown to significantly alter the attenuation proper-
ties of the surface 17–19 , for example. The flow speeds in jet engines in
aircraft industry are higher than in the engine compartment of a truck,
hence the importance of the flow field for these parameter ranges is un-
known. This is studied in this thesis 10 . Also the impact of the temper-
ature field is studied. The possibility to include this in simulations was
investigated and a method is proposed for this purpose.
Representation of sound absorbing materials may be detailed or simple,
depending on the available information about the material and the choice
of software. In many cases, the normal absorption coefficient or sur-
face impedance is available from manufacturers, why this often is used
in simulations. The experimentally determined absorption coefficient
and surface impedance are valid only for the case in which the meas-
urements were performed. Due to this, the importance of the sound
field interaction with the absorber is studied in this thesis 9 . In order to
capture arbitrary sound fields in the simulation, a more thorough rep-
resentation of the material may be needed, built upon models of the
material or other measurement methods. A free field method was stud-
ied within this thesis 12 to enable impedance determination at arbitrary
sound fields. An important aspect to consider is also internal mean flow
in the material itself. This may alter the absorption performance and is
studied in this thesis 11 .
Finally, the question of simulation software arises. In taking all the
considerations above into account, in combination with the desired fre-
quency range of the analysis, a proper technique is chosen. Pass-by
noise considers a wide range of frequencies, from 50 - 5000 Hz, thus
several methods may need to be used in high and low frequencies. Fi-
nite element methods enables inclusion of most physics and detail, al-
though the required resolution of the mesh makes the models large and
computationally heavy already at 1 kHz for large systems as for noise
radiation from full vehicles. The BEM or FMBEM formulations are pre-
ferred to FEM for this reason, where only surfaces are assigned mesh-
9
ing and the propagation between surfaces are calculated from free field
solutions. Some physical phenomena may though be lost to gain com-
putational efficiency. In order to make well grounded decisions upon
this, the impact of the absorbing material representation (paper E 13 ) on
the simulated noise levels and the impact on attenuation performance
of the external fields are studied in this thesis.
The thesis aims at clarifying the aspects discussed above by ana-
lyzing numerical, theoretical and experimental studies and providing
methods to include relevant effects in simulations.
1.3 Aim and objectives

The aim of this thesis is to clarify and give insight in important aspects
when designing acoustic simulations, especially concerning the repres-
entation of the acoustic trim materials. The acquired knowledge is im-
portant both in making well grounded simplifications or assumptions
in the setup and how these decisions may affect the conclusions drawn
from the simulated results. More insight of suitable experimental meth-
ods to characterize the absorption performance will also enable an in-
crease in simulation quality and understanding of the results.
The objectives are:

• To assess the effects of the assumption of local reaction on the per-
formance of an absorbing material.
• To analyze existing experimental methods for material character-
ization and the limitations that the input from these measurements
will introduce in simulation results.
• To investigare the accuracy and usefulness of existing methods
and models to include flow and temperature gradients in simu-
lations of absorber performance.
• To assess the impact of flow and temperature gradients on the ab-
sorption properties of a simple absorbing material sample.
• To provide a suitable methodology to handle flow and temperat-
ure effects in simulations.
• To assess the important aspects of absorber representation in sim-
ulations of noise radiation from large systems.
10
2 Material
characterization
Most sound absorbing materials used in practice are porous plastic foams,
fibrous felt materials or glass wool. Common for the materials is a poros-
ity of more than 90 %, i.e. the majority of the material is air. The materi-
als are hence built up from an elastic frame material, such as melamine,
of a certain structure which is saturated by air, as seen in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1: Microscopic image of two melamine foams.
The manufacturing processes and the mixture of materials, to men-

tion a few, are factors making the prediction of material properties dif-
ficult without experimental determination. Measuring the absorption
properties of a material sample is possible either by determining the
absorption directly, section 2.1, or by characterizing the material prop-
erties and model the absorption, section 2.2. Which of the techniques to
choose depends both on the intended data needed in the simulation, and
on what application to be simulated. The advantages and usefulness of
the different techniques will be discussed within this chapter.
One important aspect to consider is that the absorption coefficient is
a system property and not an intrinsic material property. It is a meas-
11
CHAPTER 2. MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION
ure of the amount of sound energy that is converted to heat via viscous
losses, for example. The absorption obtained from the same material
varies as the sound field above it is changed, hence it is specific for the
case in which it was determined.
2.1 Absorption properties

The sound absorption coefficient, α, is a measure of the amount of en-
ergy absorbed when reflected on the material surface as
Wabs
α= = 1 − | R |2 , (2.1)
Winc
where Winc is the acoustic energy incident at the material surface, Wabs
the energy absorbed and R is the complex reflection coefficient. This
coefficient is evidently a measure of the present system, i.e. the acoustic
state and the geometry and mounting of the material sample.
The normal incidence or the diffuse field absorption coefficient may
be determined in accordance with existing standards, either in an im-
pedance tube 20 or in a reverberant room 21 , respectively. The fields are
different, hence the obtained absorption differs, shown in for example
Paper A 9;22 and in Figure 2.2. The absorption coefficient for the two
materials measured for normal and diffuse field are shown to differ sig-
nificantly. As an example, a relative error of 100 % is seen at 1000 Hz for
both materials. This clearly marks the importance of the sound field in
the measurement and that the attenuation performance may be largely
under- or overestimated if the determination is performed without con-
sidering this.
In the method for normal incidence 20 , also the complex impedance
of the surface,
p 1−R
Zs (θ = 0) = = , (2.2)
v 1+R
is determined, where θ is the angle of incidence from the normal, p is
the pressure and v the particle velocity. This is more suitable to use
in simulations, compared to the absorption coefficient, since it contains
both the amplitude and phase information of the reflected wave. As
the measurement is performed at normal incidence, the impedance and
absorption coefficient are only valid for that particular field, which is an
12
2.1. ABSORPTION PROPERTIES
0.9
0.8
0.7
Absorption coefficient,α
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
Diffuse field, material A

0.2 Normal incidence, material A
Diffuse field, material B
0.1 Normal incidence, material B
0
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Frequency,Hz
Figure 2.2: Absorption coefficient for two materials in diffuse field and at normal incid-
ence.
extreme case rarely encountered in real applications where the sound

fields are more complex.
The representation of the material as a surface impedance implies

the surface to be locally reacting. This means that the impedance is in-
dependent of the angle of incidence and the material behaves as lumped,
and no reaction parallell to the surface is modelled. Most materials are
bulk reacting to different extent and the reaction can for some materials
be close to normal, independent of the sound field interacting with the
material. For other materials such as honeycomb structures, the reaction
is almost purely local. The extended reaction may then be neglected,
assuming local reaction. For these materials it is hence a valid assump-
tion. For others, where the extended reaction is more pronounced, the
assumption introduce errors. Also, the normal incidence measurement
does not detect anisotropy or other phenomena affecting the angular
dependance of the surface impedance. In order to capture the angular
dependence, other methods needs to be applied. One of these are stud-
ied in Section 2.1.1.
13
2.1.1 Free field methods

The so called free-field, and in-situ, measurement methods are used to
determine the sound absorption properties in fields other than the nor-
mally incidence or diffuse case. These are not yet standardized and
many variations of the methods exist 23 . The choice of source and re-
ceiver types differ between methods. In this thesis two microphones
and a monopole point source are used. The material sample is placed
on the rigid floor in a semi anechoic room and microphones are placed
normally aligned close above the material and the source is placed at an
angle θ to the receivers as shown in Figure 2.3.
Figure 2.3: General setup of the free-field measurements. Note that the figure is not to
scale, the receiver distance from the surface is much smaller than the source distance. The
angle of incidence θ1 (θ1 and θ2 assumed equal) may be altered and the type and number
of receivers differ between methods.
An advantage of this method is the possibility to determine the sur-

face impedance at any angle of incidence. In this way, the material
may be characterized for arbitrary incidence, allowing determination at
a field that mimics the application. The material to be characterized may
be anisotropic, multi-layered, composite or in other ways complex and
difficult to describe by simple models. By altering the incidence angle,
the local reaction assumption may also be verified if no change in im-
pedance is seen.
The formulation of the field above a surface of impedance Zs is chosen
to represent the field in the experiment. The measured pressures in the
two points are then inserted in this field formulation and the impedance
is deduced. The correspondence of the field formulation with the meas-
ured field is hence essential for accurate impedance determination. This
has been thoroughly investigated, for example the effect of a formula-
14
tion based on local or extended reacting materials 23–25 , among others.

As with all measurements, sources of error are present. The method
is previously shown sensitive to the size of the sample 25–29 . This is re-
lated to the diffracted field from the material edges, not included in the
field formulation. The error has previously been shown to depend on
the dimensions of the sample and on the setup geometry. The finite
sample error is investigated thoroughly in paper D 12 of this thesis, in
particular in relation to the properties of the material. The size of the
error is shown to depend on the absorption properties of the material.
Finite size errors

The error originates from the diffracted waves created at the sample
edges, see Figure 2.4, which are included in the measured signal as un-
wanted noise. This part of the field is correlated since it originates from
the same source, however, it is considered as noise since it is not in-
cluded in the field formulation, thus contributing to errors in the de-
duced impedance.
Figure 2.4: Pressure field above a finite sample (brown) on an infinite rigid floor (black):
direct, pdir , reflected pre f and edge diffracted field ps .
The errors are in frequency domain seen as oscillations about the

correct value of the impedance. The period and amplitude of the oscil-
lations are related to the size of the sample. On square samples at nor-
mal incidence, the contribution from all four edges are equally strong
and in phase, enhancing the error as compared to an irregularly shaped
sample. Simulations on square samples of different materials show these
oscillations and, more importantly, show that the amplitude of the oscil-
lations differ between materials 30 ; see Figure 2.5 where
∆α = αquadratic − αin f inite . (2.3)
15
Material C
0.02 Material B
Material A
0.01
∆α
-0.01
-0.02
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Frequency, Hz
Figure 2.5: Effect of edge diffraction from simulation of the measurement with finite
sample (2x2 m) on the absorption coefficient for different materials 30 .
The worst case for finite size errors is a circular sample, since the
contribution from all points on the edge are equal. Measurements on
circular samples of three materials were performed and are presented in
Paper D 12 , to enhance the errors and emphasizing the difference in the
error originating from the materials.
The difference in the pressure measured on an infinite sample, p∞ ,
and circular sample, pcircular ,
| p∞ − pcircular |
∆p = (2.4)
| p∞ |
indicates the size of the edge diffracted field. The measured pressure
difference for one microphone position is shown in Figure 2.6 for three
different materials.
The difference in pressure clearly depends on the material of the
sample, implying stronger diffraction of the materials with higher flow
resistivity. This shows the error in the measured pressures, not in the
final deduced surface impedance or absorption coefficient. The results
are discussed in detail in paper C 10 .
The sample size errors are inevitable for obvious practical seasons
and it would therefore be of large interest to remove the diffracted field
from the measured signals before performing the impedance deduction.
16
A: σ = 3.5 k Rayls/m
1.8
B: σ = 5 k Rayls/m
C: σ = 40 k Rayls/m
1.6
1.4
1.2
∆ p(z1)
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 2.6: Difference in pressure in one position between circular and infinite sample for
three materials 12 .
A method for this purpose is suggested in paper D 12 . The method is

based on estimating the diffracted field from measurements and simul-
taneously removing this contribution from the measured signals. The
diffracted field is estimated through a formulation of the field above a
rigid surface, with a patch of finite impedance representing the sample;
see Figure 2.7.
Figure 2.7: Pressure field above an infinite surface of admittance β 0 with a circular area A
of radius a and admittance β. The radial coordinate is w and the azimuthal angle φ
The method starts from a formulation of the field in Figure 2.7 from
the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz integral equation,
17
Z Z Z Z Z
∂ ∂
p(z) = f (z0 )GdV + G p(z0 ) − p(z0 ) G dS, (2.5)
∂n ∂n
where G is Green’s function for a semi infinite space bounded by an im-

pedance surface, S is the surface limiting the acoustic volume V above
the impedance surface, z is the receiver position above the material, z0
is the source position, n is the normal of this surface and f is the source
term (represented by a point source δ(z − z0 ), see paper C for more de-
tails). In this case, the boundary conditions are set by a circular sample
of radius a with a finite, unknown, impedance Zs = 1/ β and the rest of
the bounding surface being rigid (β 0 = 0). Inserting the boundary con-
ditions and the Green’s function into Equation 2.5 and simplifying the
equations gives an expression for the total pressure on the form
p(z) = p β (z, β) + Ps (β, β 0 )I(a, z, ϑ, ϑi ), (2.6)
where p β is the ideal pressure (without the diffracted field) from the
sample of admittance β, Ps the amplitude of the diffracted field and I is
an integral of the diffracted waves depending on the area of the sample,
and the incident and diffracted angles, ϑi and ϑ respectively. The amp-
litude of the diffracted field, Ps , is assumed independent of the area of
the sample, since the diffraction angles are included in the integral I.
The two unknowns in equation (2.6) are the amplitude of the dif-
fracted field and the ideal, undisturbed pressure signal which is sought.
These are both dependent on the sample material and the positions of
the source and microphones. Using two samples of the same material of
radius a1 and a2 , the ideal field can be extracted from the system,

p(z, a1 ) 1 I(a1 , z, ϑ1 cos ϑi,1 ) p β (z, β)
= . (2.7)
p(z, a2 ) 1 I(a2 , z, ϑ2 cos ϑi,2 ) Ps (β, β 0 )
The ideal field p β is derived from Equation (2.7) in both measure-

ment points separately, and are used to deduce corrected impedance.
To evaluate this method, numerical simulations of the measurement
were performed using FEM. The pressure in one point for two sample
radii, the pressure from the infinite sample and the ideal, corrected pres-
sure is shown in Figure 2.8.
18
2.8
Ideal signal
2.6 r = 0.25 m
s
r = 0.35 m
s
2.4
Corrected
2.2
2
|p(z1)|
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
0.8
1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 2.8: Absolute value of the pressure for an infinite sample, circular samples of radius,
rs = 0.35 m and 0.5 m and the corrected pressure p β (z1 ) obtained by the proposed method,
equation (2.7).
The oscillations are seen to be heavily reduced. Performing this re-

duction for both microphone signals, the error in the final impedance,
| Z∞ − Zcorrected |
∆Z = , (2.8)
| Z∞ |
is also reduced; see Figure 2.9.
The error is seen to be significantly reduced with this method, espe-
cially in higher frequencies. The error close to the pressure minimum in
the microphones is still in need of reduction, and further development
of this method is needed to handle this issue. For example, additional
microphone positions may be used.
Sample mounting errors

Another difficulty with this method, not analyzed in the literature of the
finite size errors, is the mounting of the sample. In the measurement
setup, the sample is mounted either flush a rigid frame or the mater-
ial is simply placed on the floor. If the measurement is performed in
an anechoic chamber, a rigid backing is added. The mounting setup it-
self may contribute to edge diffraction, diverging from the ideal field
formulation, introducing errors in the final results 30 . The influence of
this is also assumed to be material dependent, since the amplitude of
19
0.14
rs = 0.35 m
rs = 0.50 m
0.12
Corrected
0.1
0.08
∆Z
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
Frequency [Hz]
Figure 2.9: Error in the surface impedance comparing an infinite sample to the finite
samples of different radii, rs , based on simulations of measurements, and the corrected
pressure using the suggested methodology in equation (2.7).
the waves on the edges are affected when propagating through the ma-
terial before diffracted at the edges. The mounting of the material in a
frame or on a rigid backing, adds rigid edges in the setup that will cre-
ate diffracted waves; see a) and b) respectively in Figure 2.10. The edges
causing diffraction are indicated by red arrows.
Figure 2.10: Different rigid mountings (black) of the material sample (brown) in free-field
measurements. The red arrows indicates edges causing edge diffracted waves.
In mounting case a), the only edge causing diffraction is the sample
edge. This edge is rather soft, acoustically speaking, depending on the
material properties. In mounting b) and c) the mounting itself contribute
with rigid edges causing reflection and diffraction. The diffraction at
20
these edges may be stronger than at the material edge as they are rigid.
In order to investigate this, FEM simulations of the measurement
with the different mountings were performed. The difference in absorp-
tion coefficient between an infinite sample and a quadratic sample, ∆α,
is shown in Figure 2.11.
0.8 Placed on floor

Rigid backing
Frame
0.6
0.4
∆α
0.2
−0.2
−0.4
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Frequency, Hz
Figure 2.11: Difference in α between an infinite sample and differently mounted square
samples with side length 1m, 2 cm thick and with flow resistivity 5000 Rayls/m 30 .
The mounting is shown to significantly affect the accuracy of the ob-

tained absorption. The errors from mountings b) and c) are much lar-
ger than for mounting a). This may be explained by the rigid edges
discussed previously. The size of the impact is shown to be material
dependent. For mounting b) and c), the impact was reduced when the
flow resistivity and absorption coefficient of the material were increased.
This due to the fact that the waves incident on the rigid edges are more
attenuated for these materials, hence the diffracted waves reaching the
microphones have lower amplitude. The relation of the error to the ma-
terial was the opposite for case a) where high flow resistivity indicated
larger errors (as discussed in the previous section).
Further measurements of the issues related to the mounting of the
sample are of interest in future studies. In addition, it is interesting to
implement the method for reducing finite sample errors 12 to analyze its
efficiency on the mounting errors.
21
2.2 Material properties

Porous absorbers can also be described by different properties of the
material itself, such as density or porosity. The material properties alone
describes the material, however, they do not by themselves indicate the
absorption performance of the material. By including the properties into
a material model and simulating the full system (either with FEM or in
transfer matrix method 31 ), the absorption is obtained.
A commonly used material model is the semi-empirical equivalent
fluid model proposed by Delany and Bazley 32 . This model considers
the absorber as a fluid with viscous losses and is fully described by the
density of air and the flow resistivity of the material. Other, more com-
plex models, based on for example Biot theory 33 needs several paramet-
ers such as the Youngs modulus of the frame material, the viscous and
thermal lengths etc. These models includes the behavior of the frame
and the possible waves coupling the air and the frame.
The aim of the work within this thesis is to investigate the impact
of the field interaction on attenuation performance and how to include
that in simulations. The specific material model used here is not the
main interest but the focus is on the difference between the types of rep-
resentation of the material, obtained from the same material model.
In order to obtain the absorption of multi-layered structures, the prop-
erties of each layer must be known. Also, for complex composite mater-
ials, the structure and interaction between the included materials are
difficult to model and the absorption from the composite may be diffi-
cult to predict. The same problem may occur for anisotropic materials,
where the properties in different directions must be analysed 34 .
Another thing to consider when characterizing the material is the
situation where it will be simulated. Flow inside the material, for ex-
ample, alters the flow resistivity of the material 35;36 . This makes an iso-
tropic material anisotropic, and it changes the surface impedance and
absorption also at normal incidence. The impact of internal mean flow
on absorption is studied in paper B in this thesis 11 .
22
3 Acoustic simulations
Simulations of acoustic phenomena in automotive applications are nor-

mally done in FEM or in BEM, depending on the system to be analysed.
In general, BEM is usually applied for radiation problems 14;37;38 and
FEM for interior simulations. Other methods such as WEM and SEA are
also available however not discussed here.
Figure 3.1: Simplified model of a truck, meshed in COMSOL Multiphysics.
23
CHAPTER 3. ACOUSTIC SIMULATIONS
In FEM, the structures and acoustic volumes are discretized and the
governing equations are solved for all nodes in the mesh. The size of the
system to be solved increases with the size of the acoustic domain to be
solved. This formulation is suitable for example for enclosed volumes
such as the cabin of a truck. An advantage of this method is that reac-
tion inside structures may be resolved. For example, bulk reacting por-
ous absorbers may be resolved and their noise attenuating performance
calculated properly in the specific sound field in the simulation.
In BEM, on the other hand, only the surfaces are meshed. The propaga-
tion in the acoustic domains is governed by basic solutions of Green’s
functions. This entails a large advantage for large systems such as radi-
ation in semi-infinite spaces, since the surface meshes sets the size of the
system. Since no volumes are resolved, the formulation entails locally
reacting surfaces assigned a normal impedance as the boundary condi-
tion. This implies simplifications of the reaction in the material, now
restricted to waves normal to the surface.
In this section, the variation in absorber performance in simulations
due to the representation of the material and the field to which they
are subjected is analysed. The considered fields interacting with the ab-
sorber are the sound, flow and temperature fields. The simulations are
performed in FEM and are made both on simple flat material samples
and on a large radiation problem independently to show the local and
global impacts.
The three representations used in this analysis are:
• a) Full resolution of the bulk reaction in the material,
• b) application of an angular dependent surface impedance and
• c) application of the impedance for normal incidence.
The first representation implies measuring material properties and

assigning a material model to the domain, while b) and c) implies the
use of surface impedances.
3.1 Material representation

Different ways to acquire the sound absorption properties of a material
used as input to simulations were discussed in section 2. Depending
on the type of input about the absorber obtained from measurements,
24
3.1. MATERIAL REPRESENTATION
different representations may be used to include the presence of the ma-

terial.
In paper A 9 , the absorption coefficient was calculated for different
angles of plane wave incidence for a material sample modeled as loc-
ally and bulk reacting and the absorption was compared. The analysis
shows that the absorption is significantly altered if the bulk reaction is
neglected, especially for large angles of incidence and for material with
low flow resistivity; see Figure 3.2 and paper A.
Figure 3.2: Difference in absorption coefficient between bulk and local reaction represent-
ations for a flat absorber, paper A 9 .
For cases where there are plane waves incident mainly from a spe-
cific angle, the surface impedance for that angle may represent the sur-
face which captures the bulk reaction in the material for that particular
sound field. This intermediate representation requires good knowledge
of the sound field in the system in order to choose the surface impedance
for the correct angle, Zs (θ), as the boundary condition. This takes the an-
gular variation of the impedance into account without need of FEM to
resolve the reaction in the material.
The angular dependance may be altered due to the presence of in-
ternal or external fields, such as temperature and flow, why this also has
to be taken into account. How to include these effects and entailing res-
ults are discussed in section 3.1.1. Internal mean flow in the material
creates anisotropy, and also needs to be included 11 .
25
3.1.1 Flow and temperature fields

The impedance of a surface exposed to grazing flow is known to be
altered and research on this subject is performed in aircraft industry 18;19;39 .
Models for the change in surface impedance due to the flow have been
developed, however, the size of the impact varies between the different
models 17;40 . Another possible way to include the effect of a flow bound-
ary layer, without use of these models, on the surface performance is to
use FEM in the layer; resolving the propagation through the flow field
in the boundary layer and inside the material.
A model to include flow and temperature variations on the surface
properties is to include these effects in an angular dependent effective
surface impedance. A method based on this is proposed in paper D in
this thesis 10 . The method is developed for a flat rigidly backed porous
material with a flow and temperature boundary layer above the material
surface, as in Figure 3.3. The method includes the extended reaction
in the material and in the boundary layer, giving an efficient surface
impedance including the boundary layer effect.
Figure 3.3: The generic case of plane waves incident at an angle γ (definition of the angle
in Paper D 10 corresponds to θ = π /2 − γ) on a flat absorptive surface with a flow and
temperature boundary layer of thickness δ. The free field Mach number of the grazing
flow is M = V /c0 and the absolute temperature is T.
The method is based on the transfer matrix method, TMM 31 , relating

the impedance at the surface, Zs , to the impedance above the boundary
layer, Ze f f , via a transfer matrix. TMM is normally restricted to layers
with constant properties. In paper D 10 , however, a transfer matrix over a
boundary layer of varying properties is derived in the proposed method.
The propagation in the boundary layer is governed by the Pridmore-
26
3.1. MATERIAL REPRESENTATION
Brown equation 41 , which is written on the form,
d
S(z) = A(z)S(z), (3.1)
dz
T
where S(z) = p(z) v(z) is a vector and A(z) is the system matrix
describing the propagation in the boundary layer. If A(z) is constant,
the transfer matrix, TBL , for the layer would simply be obtained by
A(z)δ
TBL = em . (3.2)
where em is the matrix exponential. In this case, A(z) varies with z and
thus a numerical method is needed to obtain the transfer matrix. A
fourth order Runge-Kutta method is applied, leading to
S(δ) = [ I + g(δ, A(z1 ), A(z2 ), A(z3 ))] S(0) = TBL S(0), (3.3)
where g is a function of the matrix A(z) in three points inside the layer;
for details, see paper C 10 . Since the method is built upon TMM, the
boundary layer can also be discretized in order to improve the accuracy.
This is implemented in the paper.
The method is applied to several cases with flow and temperature
gradients, and the impact on the absorption ∆α, as a function of incid-
ence angle and frequency are calculated in paper C. The difference is
defined as
∆α = αre f − αe f f , (3.4)
where αe f f is the absorption including the temperature and flow bound-

ary layer and αre f is the absorption without these effects.
One test case is shown in Figure 3.4. Here, the flow resistivity is 5
k Rayl/m, the thickness of the boundary layer is 0.02 m, the free field
Mach number is 0.1 and the temperature outside the boundary layer is
150 ◦ C. The absorption is seen to be significantly altered by the temper-
ature and flow variations, especially for downstream propagation close
to grazing incidence. In this field, the flow and temperature effects en-
hance each other. The effect of these fields may be included in the sur-
face impedance which can then be represented as an angular dependent
impedance.
27
5000
0.16 0.3
0.08
0.04
0.08
0.04
0
0.082
0.08
4500
0.04
0.1
0.
2
0
0
4000 0.25
0
3500 0.2
4
0.2
0.24
-0.0
0.12
Frequency, Hz
0.24
0.16
3000
-0.04
0.08 0.16
0.12
0.3
0.04
0.12
0.15
0.2
0.08
0.08
0.04
0.04
2500
0.12
0.08
0.04
0.32
0.2
2000 0.1
0.3 0.28
0.28
0
1500
0.05
0.24
0.12
0.24 0.16
1000
0.16
0. 0.08
0.04
0 0
08
4
4
500 12 0.
0
2
0. 0.
0.
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

Angle of incidence, γ
Figure 3.4: Difference in absorption coefficient, ∆α, of an absorbing surface at various

angles of incidence for a test case (corresponding to case A in Paper C).
The absorption properties are indeed seen to dependent on the field

to which they are exposed. The field may contain variations in temper-
ature, flow speed and sound incidence. If the interaction of the field
outside or inside the absorber, nor the interaction of the fields, are not
included the sound attenuation performance of the material may be in-
correctly predicted in simulations. It is therefore of large importance to
know which parts of the field to include in the material representation
for the current application.
3.2 Pass-by noise

The impact of the material representation on local level is shown in pre-
vious sections, however, the impact on a larger scale where more real-
istic sound fields are present also needs to be analysed. As a final test,
the parameters and material representations shown to influence the at-
tenuation performance of a material sample, were evaluated on a large
scale test simulation. The simulations are performed on a pass-by noise
28
3.2. PASS-BY NOISE
test 3 , for which external noise levels for vehicles are set 4 . These simula-
tions were performed in paper E 13 of this thesis.
A model of a truck was built in FEM from the parts shielding, absorb-
ing and scattering the noise radiated from the powertrain of the truck;
see Figure 3.5.
Figure 3.5: Truck model built for FEM simulations in paper E 13 . The blue parts are the
absorbers on the encapsulations and the red is the cabin floor absorber. The remaining
surfaces are rigid.
Two source positions were used, one representing the combustion

noise radiated from the oil tray and one for the mechanical noise from
the transmission between engine and gearbox: see Figure 3.6. Shown
is the wrap mesh of the engine on which surface vibrations are known
of course basically possible to use as source data. In these simulations,
however, for simplicity only point sources are used, and a simplified
model of the engine geometry is adopted.
The three different material representations where implemented for
a porous absorber with bulk reaction and the results where compared.
The bulk reaction representation (a) is chosen as the reference to which
the simulations with the other representations are compared. The dif-
ference in radiated sound power level,
∆LW,N = LW,N − LW,re f , (3.5)
for the two impedance representations, extended local reaction (b) and
local reaction (c) are shown in Figure 3.7.
This comparison shows that the surface impedance representation
clearly underestimated the attenuation performance of the trim mater-
29
Figure 3.6: Wrap mesh of the engine. The regions primarily radiating noise are indicated
(black) and the positions of the sources in the simulations are marked by red dots.
7 LW,b - L W,ref
LW,c - L W,ref
6
5
∆ LW , dB
-1
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Frequency, Hz
Figure 3.7: The difference in radiated sound power level for the engine source in simula-
tions where the material is represented by local reaction and extended local reaction, b)
and c), compared to the reference bulk reaction case a) (corresponding to case 1-3 in paper
E 13 ).
ial. The sound power level is a measure of the radiated noise hence
indicating the global attenuation in the system.
The engine installation on the truck is rather open, encapsulated
from above by the cabin floor and underneath by the noise encapsula-
30
3.2. PASS-BY NOISE
tions. The shielding on the sides consist of a combination of side shields

and natural shielding by the wheels, beams etc. The engine bay is ac-
cordingly rather open in the front and back, while the sides are rather
well shielded. This can be seen in pass-by noise measurements where
the maximum levels are seen when the truck has passed the microphone
section (for more information about the test, see Paper E 13 or the meas-
urement standard 3 ). In the simulations in paper E, the maxima are ob-
tained behind of the vehicle for the both sources. The sound pressure
levels as a function of frequency and position in x is shown in Figure
3.8 for the two sources. The directivity in the pass-by positions for two
source positions are shown at 50- 500 Hz and 400 - 800 Hz, respectively,
for different material representations. The difference in the noise levels
are also shown.
The directivity is seen to be similar for both material representations
(case i-vi in Figure 3.8). The maximum levels are higher for the loc-
ally reacting representation, which is in line with the sound power level
calculations. This shows that the material representation is important
also for the pass-by noise levels. The impact differs between the source
positions, since both sources are not equally shielded. The transmission
source has a rather open installation compared to the engine source. The
absorbing materials of the encapsulation close to the engine have larger
potential in reducing the noise since more reflections occur before the
sound is radiated. The error in the representation of the field-absorber
interaction is then accordingly more important.
The enclosure ratio is hence also an important parameter to take in
to account when designing noise simulations. If the enclosure ratio is
low, the absorbing materials are less efficient and mostly the shielding
effect is present; This means that less noise is attenuated independent
of absorption performance of the material, it is mostly emitted without
any reduction. For a case like this, the material representation is also less
important. These results further emphasize the importance of effective
noise reducing trim inside the noise encapsulations to obtain large noise
reducing effect.
31
500 800
450 750
400
700
350
5 dB 650 5 dB
Frequency,Hz
Frequency,Hz
300
600
250
550
200
500
150
100 450
50 400
-10 -5 0 5 10 -10 -5 0 5 10
Position in x, m Position in x, m
i) Engine source, L p (bulk) ii) Transmission source, L p (bulk)

500 800
450 750
400
700
350
5 dB 650 5 dB
Frequency,Hz
Frequency,Hz
300
600
250
550
200
500
150
100 450
50 400
-10 -5 0 5 10 -10 -5 0 5 10
Position in x, m Position in x, m
iii) Engine source, L p (Zs ) iv) Transmission source, L p (Zs )

800 10
8
750
6
700
4
650
Frequency,Hz
600 0
-2
550
-4
500
-6
450
-8
400 -10
-10 -5 0 5 10
Position in x, m
v) Engine source, ∆L p vi) Transmission source, ∆L p
Figure 3.8: The sound pressure levels at the pass-by positions in x as a function of fre-
quency for two materials represented by bulk (i and ii) and local (iii and iv) reaction and
the difference between them (v and vi).
32
4 Summary and
conclusions
The variation of attenuation performance of sound absorbing materials

due to the characterization method and their representations in numer-
ical simulations have been studied in this thesis. Numerical, analytical
and experimental studies have been performed in order to analyze the
effect of the field-absorber interaction on the attenuation performance.
The analysis aimed in particular at studying how assumptions of the
fields (flow, temperature and sound field), in relation to the assump-
tions for the material behavior, affects the absorption of the material.
Also, possible ways to include these effects in simulations and how to
determine these experimentally have been performed.
The main contribution of this work are:
• The importance of including the bulk-reaction and the interaction

between the field and the absorber is shown. The performance of
the absorbing material may be significantly over- or underestim-
ated if the wrong assumptions are made in either measurements
or simulations.
- Paper A 9 , B 11 and E 13
• The free field method to measure the surface impedance at arbit-

rary sound incidence has been investigated. The errors associated
with finite material samples has been shown to depend on the ma-
terial properties of the sample.
- Paper D 12
• A method to reduce finite sample size errors in free field measure-

ments has been suggested and proven efficient.
33
CHAPTER 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
- Paper D 12
• Issues with errors from the mounting of the sample were studied.
This error is similar to the finite sample errors, although larger for
some materials. The method suggested for the finite sample errors
has potential for this error as well, although not investigated here.
• Flow boundary layers and temperature variations above an ab-
sorber are shown to significantly affect the performance of an ab-
sorbing material, also for low flow speeds (M < 0.1). A method
to include these effects in an effective surface impedance has been
developed.
- Paper C 10
• The influence of absorber representation on the pass-by noise levels
was shown to be significant.
- Paper E 13
• The importance of material representation depend on the material
positioning relative the source, and the coverage rate of the shield-
ing close to the source. Close to the source, where the shielding is
good the material representation is of most importance.
- Paper E 13
4.1 Conclusions
The field inside and outside sound absorbing material have been shown
to significantly impact the absorption performance of the material. In
this thesis, this has shown to have significance both for the choice of
experimental method for characterization of the material and in assign-
ing a representation of the material in simulations. Ill-suited choices of
these may induce errors, leading to erroneous decisions regarding noise
reducing measures.
In many simulations of large acoustic systems, usually performed in
BEM, absorbing materials are represented by a surface impedance, af-
fecting the amplitude and phase of the reflected sound waves. This rep-
resentation assumes local reaction in the material. This is in this thesis
shown to significantly alter the absorption performance of the material.
For some materials and sound fields as much as 100 % for a flat absorber.
These conclusions are drawn from measurements according to existing
methods and calculations according to previously known models.
34
4.1. CONCLUSIONS
Three representations of the absorbing materials have been studied:

a) fully resolving the propagation and bulk reaction in the material us-
ing a material model, b) using an angular dependent surface impedance
and c) using the normal incidence impedance (local reaction). Assum-
ing local reaction may be reasonable for some materials, whereas it un-
derestimates the absorption for others. An alternative to include bulk-
reaction and still use a surface impedance representation is to apply the
impedance at specific incidence angles. This requires knowledge of the
field, to enable chosing the impedance for the correct angle of incid-
ence to the surfaces representing the material. When this is considered,
BEM may be used instead of FEM. This largely simplifies calculations;
computational time is reduced and higher frequencies are possible to
simulate.
Experimental determination of the absorption could either provide
material properties for use in material models in FEM or the absorption
properties to assign to surfaces in BEM or FEM. The absorption proper-
ties, or surface impedance, is a system property only valid for the case
where it is measured. This implies that the determination should be
performed in the same field as in the application to be simulated. The
standardized method determination of the normal surface impedance is
hence only valid for specific applications or locally reactive materials.
An alternative method, for impedance determination at arbitrary sound
incidence gives better input to simulations and was studied in this pa-
per. The method may imply errors associated with finite samples and
the mounting of the samples. Within this thesis, a method to compensate
for those errors was suggested to improve measurement accuracy.
Other fields interacting with the absorber, diffracting the sound field
and influencing the attenuation performance are flow and temperature
variations. These are present, for example, in the engine bay of heavy
vehicles. Even at low flow speeds, for Mach number below 0.1, for ex-
ample, the absorption was shown to be altered up to 10 %. Existing mod-
els to include the flow boundary layer effect gave largely varying results.
Because of this, a new method for the flow and temperature impact was
proposed. The method includes effects of flow velocity variations and
temperature gradients in an effective impedance describing the surface
reaction together with the boundary layer. This may be included in sim-
ulations through the angular dependent surface impedance.
Finally, simulations of pass-by noise from a truck was simulated with
different representations of the absorbing materials. This showed that
the representation may largely affect the noise levels, as much as 1 - 2
35
CHAPTER 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
dB for materials with extended reaction. The impact of the trim repres-
entation differs depending on where the material is placed in relation to
the source and on the enclosure ratio of the shielding. Hence, care has to
be taken when assigning a representation implying local reaction of the
absorbing materials.
4.2 Future work

Some questions on the material representation and characterization are
yet to be analysed.
For example, further investigations of the free field measurement
techniques to characterize the materials would be of interest. Further
development of the method to reduce finite sample errors and mount-
ing errors would improve the measurement accuracy. Especially the ac-
curacy of the methods at various angle of incidence is of interest.
Characterization of material properties and attenuation performance
with internal flow is another field requiring further studies. The flow
has previously been shown to alter the material performance, imposing
anisotropic behavior on isotropic materials. Data for the impact on equi-
valent fluid models exists, however, it would also be interesting to study
how to incorporate this in other material models.
A natural continuation of this work is to further develop the pass-by
noise simulations including more geometrical details and source data.
Quantitative studies needs to be performed on the size of the impact
of material representations versus details in other aspects such as the
geometry, the weak coupling between shields and air, the assumed rigid
shields etc. This will give a wider understanding of how to design and
setup pass-by noise simulations.
In performing the above studies, better knowledge on how to char-
acterize materials and to design simulations of large systems will be ob-
tained.
36
5 Summary of
appended papers
Paper A - On Sound Absorbing Characteristics and

suitable Measurement methods
A. Färm, S. Boij and R. Glav, Proceedings of the 7th International Styrian
Noise, Vibration and Harshness Congress, Graz, Austria (2012)
The influence of the sound field and local reaction assumption on the
absorption coefficient of an absorber is studied. The absorption coeffi-
cient of a material depends on the sound field interacting with the ab-
sorber. A difference up to 50 % is seen when comparing the absorption
at normal incidence and in diffuse field. Local reaction is often assumed
for absorbers due to the implied simplification of simulations it entails.
A locally reacting surface can be represented by a surface impedance,
independent of the sound field interacting with the absorber. This may
introduce errors up to 50 % in the absorption coefficient. This shows
that the assumption of local reaction has to be well grounded if it is to
be used. Also, experimental determination of the absorption coefficient
should be performed in a sound field similar to the one in the intended
application or simulation.
Paper B - On internal mean flow in porous absorbers and

its effect on attenuation properties
A. Färm, S. Boij, P. Göransson, and R. Glav, Proceedings of the 21st Interna-
tional Congress on Acoustics, Montréal, Canada (2013)
The influence of internal mean flow on normal absorption properties
37
CHAPTER 5. SUMMARY OF APPENDED PAPERS
of porous absorbers is analysed. Internal flow in absorbing materials has

previously been shown to alter the flow resistivity of porous materials.
The change is different parallel and perpendicular to the flow, inducing
anisotropy in the material. Here, the absorption coefficient is calculated
with a transfer matrix approach and it was shown to be altered up to 10
% for sound incident at normal incidence. Larger influence is expected
for other angles of incidence.
Paper C - Absorption of sound at a surface exposed to

flow and temperature gradients
A. Färm, S. Boij, R. Glav and O. Dazel, Provisionally accepted for publication,
Applied Acoustics
The absorption coefficient of materials exposed to grazing flow at

Mach 0.1 and temperature gradients is shown to be significantly altered.
A numerical method to include the effects of these parameters into an
effective surface impedance is proposed and shown to agree with a ref-
erence numerical solution. The method is based on a transfer matrix
methodology and is verified against flow boundary layer effects in air-
craft applications. The effect on the absorption is larger for bulk-reacting
material since the convection effects in the boundary layer alters the
angle of incidence at the material surface. The method is easy to im-
plement and computationally efficient.
Paper D - Edge scattering impact in free field estimation

of surface impedance
A. Färm, R. Glav and S. Boij, Submitted for publication, Applied Acoustics.
The accuracy of free field measurement methods to determine the

surface impedance of a material at arbitrary angles of incidence has been
analysed. In particular, the accuracy of the method in relation to the
size and material properties of the sample is studied. The analysis of
measurements shows that the error from the finite sample varies with
the material of the sample. Simulations of the measurements confirms
this observation. A method to reduce the impact of the edge effect is
also proposed in this paper. The method is shown efficient, significantly
reducing the sample size impact on impedance determination.
38
Paper E - Pass by noise simulations
- influence of trim representation
A. Färm, R. Glav and S. Boij, To be submitted
The pass-by noise of a truck is simulated and the impact of the trim
representation is analysed. The trim is represented in three ways; the
most accurate method resolving the propagation in the absorbing ma-
terial, or using the surface impedance to represent the material. The lat-
ter allows the use of BEM where the impedance of the surface is either
chosen to represent normal incidence (assuming local reaction) or with
an angular dependence with respect to incidence. The three represent-
ations are used and the pass-by noise levels and the radiated sound
power levels are calculated. The local reaction representation is shown
to underestimate the attenuation of the trim material, giving radiated
sound power levels and pass-by noise levels up to 2 dB higher than
the bulk-reaction representation. The directivity of the radiated sound
power was not altered. Correct representation of the trim was shown to
be more important for the simulated noise levels for materials close to
the source and for cases where the source is rather enclosed. It is shown
that errors may be introduced in the simulation results if materials with
extended reaction are represented as locally reacting, disregarding the
interaction with the sound field. Clear from the simulations is also the
importance of including absorption in the shield to further increase their
efficiency. The precision in simulations hence depend strongly on the
representation of the absorptive materials.
39
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45
Part II
APPENDED PAPERS A-E

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KTH Engineering Sciences

Postal address: Visiting address: Contact:

In order to reduce noise from heavy vehicles, so called noise encap-

It is shown that the material representation significantly affects the

A measurement method in free field, to determine the angular de-

The influence of flow and temperature fields on the absorber per-

In conclusion, thorough knowledge of the material behavior and the

Keywords: Sound absorption, Porous absorbers, Bulk reaction, Local

För tunga fordon används ofta så kallade bullerkapslingar under

Forskningen i denna avhandling har analyserat dessa faktorers in-

Det visar sig att representationen av materialet inverkar kraftigt på

En mätmetod för bestämning av ytimpedansen för olika infallsvink-

Även inverkan av strömnings- och temperaturfält på absorbentprest-

Sammanfattningsvis krävs mycket god kunskap om fälten och ab-

Nyckelord: Ljudabsorption, ljudabsorbent, bulkreagerande, lokalreager-

Division of work between authors

A. Färm, S. Boij, The Effect of Boundary Layers on Bulk Reacting Liners at

A. Färm, S. Boij and O. Dazel Prediction of acoustic surface impedance

4 Summary and conclusions 33

5 Summary of appended papers 37

II APPENDED PAPERS A-E 47

Figure 1.1: Scheme of noise effect reaction (Source: Babisch 2002 2 ).

Because of the known health problems, urbanisation and the increase

1.1.1 Noise encapsulations - multifunctional conflicts

Originally, the sole purpose of the encapsulation was to fulfill the

When noise reducing materials are properly represented in simula-

1.2 Acoustic simulations

Some aspects that needs to be considered when designing acoustic

several measurement techniques and simulation software exist to char-

1.3 Aim and objectives

The objectives are:

Figure 2.1: Microscopic image of two melamine foams.

The manufacturing processes and the mixture of materials, to men-

2.1 Absorption properties

Diffuse field, material A

extreme case rarely encountered in real applications where the sound

The representation of the material as a surface impedance implies

2.1.1 Free field methods

An advantage of this method is the possibility to determine the sur-

tion based on local or extended reacting materials 23–25 , among others.

Finite size errors

The errors are in frequency domain seen as oscillations about the

∆α = αquadratic − αin f inite . (2.3)

A method for this purpose is suggested in paper D 12 . The method is

where G is Green’s function for a semi infinite space bounded by an im-

p(z) = p β (z, β) + Ps (β, β 0 )I(a, z, ϑ, ϑi ), (2.6)

The ideal field p β is derived from Equation (2.7) in both measure-

The oscillations are seen to be heavily reduced. Performing this re-

Sample mounting errors

0.8 Placed on floor

The mounting is shown to significantly affect the accuracy of the ob-

2.2 Material properties

Simulations of acoustic phenomena in automotive applications are nor-

Figure 3.1: Simplified model of a truck, meshed in COMSOL Multiphysics.

• a) Full resolution of the bulk reaction in the material,

• b) application of an angular dependent surface impedance and

• c) application of the impedance for normal incidence.

The first representation implies measuring material properties and

3.1 Material representation

different representations may be used to include the presence of the ma-

3.1.1 Flow and temperature fields

The method is based on the transfer matrix method, TMM 31 , relating

Brown equation 41 , which is written on the form,