Comparison of two internationally recognized methods for determining the sound absorption coefficient

Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Faculty of Applied Informatics, Department of Automation and Control Engineering, Nad Stranemi 4511, Czech Republic

^* Corresponding author: pdrabek@fai.utb.cz

Abstract

With today’s growing focus on noise control issues and the emergence of sound quality as an important aspect of product design, acoustic material testing is becoming increasingly relevant to engineers, designers and manufacturers from a broad range of industries. Acoustic material testing is the process by which acoustic characteristics of materials are determined in terms of absorption, reflection, impedance, admittance and transmission loss. Many different methods can be used to determine the acoustic properties of materials. There are standing wave method, two-microphone free field and multimicrophone techniques, reverberation chamber method, in-situ methods and many other alternative methods based on measurement of internal properties of porous materials. The point is that some methods are preferred over others because the environment in which they are measured is closer to real practice. The article deals with the comparison of the results of the measurement in the reverberation chamber and in the interferometer.