Normal incidence sound transmission loss evaluation by upstream surface impedance measurements

A method is developed to obtain the normal incidence sound transmission loss of noise control elements used in piping systems from upstream surface impedance measurements only. The noise control element may be a small material specimen in an impedance tube, a sealing part in an automotive hollow body network, an expansion chamber, a resonator, or a muffler. The developments are based on a transfer matrix (four-pole) representation of the noise control element and on the assumption that only plane waves propagate upstream and downstream the element. No assumptions are made on its boundary conditions, dimensions, shape, and material properties (i.e., the element may be symmetrical or not along its thickness, homogeneous or not, isotropic or not). One-load and two-load procedures are also proposed to identify the transfer matrix coefficients needed to obtain the true transmission loss of the tested element. The method can be used with a classical two-microphone impedance tube setup (i.e., no additional downstream tube and downstream acoustical measurements). The method is tested on three different noise control elements: two impedance tube multilayered specimens and one expansion chamber. The results found using the developed method are validated using numerical simulations.